Il pittore scheletro nel suo studio

Ensor painted this in the attic of his parents' house in Ostend, above the shop the family kept for summer visitors, selling seashells, chinoiserie and carnival masks. He worked in that attic from 1880 until 1917 and rarely left the town. By 1896 he was 36 and had sold almost nothing, and he had already drawn himself as a skeleton in an etching of 1888. Here the skeleton wears a proper suit and holds a palette and brushes at the easel, with finished canvases stacked around the walls of a real working room. The Antwerp panel is small, about 38 by 45 centimetres, and painted on wood rather than canvas. Several skulls sit about the floor among the pictures, as though they were studio props like any others.