Vue de Flessingue, vagues lumineuses et vibrations

In 1890 Ensor painted the work that would define his reputation, The Intrigue, a jostling crowd of grotesque carnival masks that now hangs in this same Antwerp museum. Yet the same year, the same restless painter was also making seascapes like this one, quiet views of the North Sea off Flushing, the Dutch port across the water from his native Ostend, where he had grown up above his family's souvenir shop on the seafront. Here there are no masks and almost no incident. It is mostly light and moving water, the surface broken into small vibrating touches of color, so that the whole sea seems to shimmer and come loose from the shore.