The Painter Alfred William Finch

The Antwerp museum dates this small canvas to 1880 or 1882 and has not decided between them. In those years Willy Finch, a painter friend from Ostend, often came by the Ensor family house, and the two portrayed each other again and again. Here Finch is at work. He stands side-on in a dark suit with a white handkerchief in his breast pocket, holding a big palette flecked with red and reaching toward the canvas on his easel. The picture is tall and narrow, about half a metre high, and the heavy wooden easel fills its whole left side. The paint is laid on thick and dragged, and the browns of the room nearly swallow the dark figure. Ensor signed it in capitals at the lower right. If the later date is right, it shares its year with his Oyster Eater, which the Antwerp Salon turned down in 1882 and which belongs to this museum too.