7. Drawing Room
Ensor also experimented in his drawings: He set to work in an even faster, cruder form using pencil on paper. In the process he searched for captivating forms and effects of light in his surroundings: in books, vases or the fireplace, as well as in decorative details of furniture.
In the early 1880s, he mainly produced realistic drawings in a bourgeois interior, but in around 1886, when he also became a fanatic etcher, fantastical creatures made their appearance. The influence of French artist Odilon Redon and Flemish masters such as Bosch and Bruegel is palpable.
During three particularly productive years, he reworked and transformed some drawings with motifs from his first period. He also created totally new fantastical compositions, which certainly appeal to the imagination. One example is The Upright Piano: what appears from a distance to be a dead still life depicting a piano turns out to be a ghostly scene on closer inspection. A devil emerges from the curtains on the left, while in front of the piano a small man appears to be playing the instrument.
Take a moment to look at the two drawings of mirrors, side by side on the wall. Based on his own reflection in the living room mirror, Ensor draws death surrounded by creatures and masks. Ensor transforms a similar mirror image into a monkfish. The drawing of the skeleton belonged to poet Emile Verhaeren, who wrote one of the first monographs on Ensor in 1908. The other mirror, showing the devil as a sea monster, like two other drawings in this room, originally belonged to Ernest Rousseau's collection. They were part of a large collage with more than thirty hybrid drawings, featuring objects and living creatures. Ensor had glued it to a canvas and given it to Rousseau. From 1879, Ensor became a friend of the Rousseau couple, visiting them at their home in Brussels, which opened up his world of art, literature and politics.