Entry
This still life contains a collection of objects from the Far East including three Japanese fans, of which the handle of one has been placed in a tall vase. Behind the base is a Chinese teapot. There are some smaller objects in the foreground that are difficult to identify. These include a small, hexagonal porcelain jar with a spherical lid and a blue statue of an old man with a beard and red drapery. There is also a white feather and three different drapery elements: a cashmere scarf on the table, a heavier, carpet-like cloth that is partially folded, and a second scarf at rear right.
From the sixteenth century onwards, trading companies – and occasionally secret colonial initiatives by the Dutch and British East India Companies – imported tea, silk, porcelain and spices from China (an East-India Company was active in Ostend between 1722 and 1731 but this successful venture was dissolved as part of the European peace negotiations). Fascination with Chinese culture in eighteenth-century Europe prompted Chinese decorative motifs and architectural forms to be imitated and adapted into what came to known as chinoiseries. Ensor used the term chinoiserie for all of his still lifes in which he depicted a range of objects from the Far East. He also exhibited this work on one occasion under the title Vase and Textile, while in a letter to Emma Lambotte, he called the work La grande nature-more aux chinoiseries
(The large still life with chinoiseries
). This is a fitting title which allows us to distinguish this work from several others that Ensor simply dubbed Chinoiseries. On this occasion, he depicts Chinese tableware and a small blue and red statue of a Chinese deity; a statue he would use again in three still lifes circa 1906.
In 1853, a small American war fleet forced Japan to abandon its isolationism and participate in international trade. Soon after, Japanese art started to be collected and imitated in Europe. Ensor’s mother and aunt, Catharina and Maria (Mimi) Haegheman, ordered objects from the Far East from Siegfried Bing in Paris. We do not know whether Ensor personally owned the objects in this still life or whether he borrowed them from friends, such as the Rousseau-Hannon family. A drawing of the Chinese teapot and a Japanese fan of circa 1880/83 is believed to have come from the Ernest and Mariette Rousseau-Hannon collection. In this still life he depicted three Japanese fans: a sparsely decorated flat, fixed fan of bamboo and paper; a bamboo and paper folding fan with visible sticks; and a second flat, fixed fan decorated with a figurative scene.
Trade relations with the Indies were established by the East India Companies, but interest in Indian art and culture only flourished in Europe in the 19th century. Ensor utilised one or more examples of what were known at the time as Indian shawls.
Over the course of 60 years, Ensor painted more than 230 still lifes, amounting to a third of his painted oeuvre. With the exception of a short break around 1885/88, Ensor painted at least one still life a year. He considered the still life the most important genre and the touchstone of the true colourist
. He painted some twenty smaller object studies in the years 1880 to 1881 that are clearly distinct from the full still lifes he painted between 1880 and 1883. These still lifes remain conceptually within a centuries-old tradition, but his choice of objects depicted (apples, meal ingredients including a Savoy cabbage, vegetables, meat, fish, oysters, flowers and decorative objects) is rather more modern, as is the sketchiness of the execution. The choice of components – Chinese and Japanese objects included – and the overall design are closely aligned with the work of the older Brussels avant-gardists and the Courbet disciples, Louis Dubois and Pericles Pantazis, whom Ensor would continue to admire throughout his life.
The composition is designed as a classic, theatrical, 17th-century showpiece still life: a range of valuable objects are displayed more or less in a pyramid arrangement on a cloth-covered table, with a further drapery piece as an elegant backdrop. Nearly a third of the composition is taken up by the scarf draped over the table. The objects are quite crowded and Ensor does not exploit their exotic and whimsical appearance. Ensor chose them for the rich colour accents and striking white surfaces of the fans and one fan’s light blue and occasional bright red accents. The rather sketchy depiction of the objects renders many of them difficult or impossible to identify, while the scenes on the vase or blue fan remain unreadably imprecise. The small objects at the base of the centrally placed Chinese vase are nothing more than spots – a style often referred to as tachism
during the 20th century, as if it were an independent, indigenous form of Belgian impressionism, despite the fact that this development of realism or pleinairism was popular in France, the Netherlands, Germany and the Scandinavian countries too. Like the vast majority of Ensor's work, the composition is painted directly from life, without preparatory studies or preliminary drawings.
The size of the painting and its somewhat classic composition betray significant ambition. This work is one of the seven pieces from 1880 and1881 that Ensor exhibited in January at L’Essor, an association of students and alumni of the Brussels art academy. The work appeared together with another somewhat blue-hued still life of 1882 that can be seen in Ensor’s 1892 painting, My Favourite Room. He again chose this work for his first solo exhibition of 1894. In 1898, fellow artist, Constantin Meunier, and the critics Edmond Picard and Emile Verhaeren expressed the opinion that Ensor’s talents lent themselves best to still lifes like these. After 1905, at a time when he was actively seeking recognition for his pioneering work, he again chose this still life for a 1909 exhibition at Kunst van Heden / L'Art contemporain in Antwerp, as well as for the 1910 retrospective of his work put on by the Rotterdamse Kunstkring. Emma Lambotte-Protin subsequently acquired this painting for her private collection. It was later bought by the KMSKA in 1927.
The painting was executed on top of a study of a model that Ensor had painted at the art academy in Brussels. Ten academic studies from models have been ascribed to Ensor, only one of which was ever exhibited by Ensor himself. This was in 1929. Others come from the collection of Ensor's servant, August Van Yper. To date, the authenticity of these stylistically diverse model studies has never been questioned.
