El gallo muerto

Mannheim owned a different Ensor first. The Kunsthalle had bought Death and the Masks, one of his crowded pictures of masked figures, and in 1937 the Nazi authorities carried it out of the building as degenerate art, along with hundreds of other works from the same collection. That painting hangs in Liège today. In the 1950s the museum bought this still life in its place. A black and white cockerel hangs head down from a beam on a slack loop of cord, left to bleed. To the left of it lie the makings of a soup, carrots, leeks, onions and a wilting cabbage, and to the right grapes and pears sit in front of a willow basket. Ensor was 34 when he signed and dated it in the lower right corner, in 1894.