Marine grise

Ensor came home to Ostend in 1880, at 20, having had enough of the Brussels academy, and set up a studio in the attic of his parents' house. The seascapes he painted in those first years back are nearly colourless, heavy grey worked across both water and sky, and he signed this one ENSOR 80 in the corner. Official taste had no use for what he was doing. The Oyster Eater, painted two years after this, was refused by the Antwerp salon and by the Brussels artists' group L'Essor. Forty years later the Antwerp museum wanted his early work and could not pay for it, so a group of private citizens, the three Franck brothers among them, bought four of these first canvases for the collection in 1921.