Bathing Hut on the Beach
object number:
2972
measurements:
17,5 × 22,5 cm
date:
1876 - 1876
object number:
2972
measurements:
17,5 × 22,5 cm
date:
1876 - 1876
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1Anthea Callen, The Work of Art: Plein-Air Painting and Artistic Identity in Nineteenth-Century France, (Reaktion BooksLtd, London, 2015), 82-89.
2Mireille Engel, De schilderijen van James Ensor in het Kröller-Müller Museum. Scriptie, SRAL Maastricht: 2009. Appendix III
1N.H. (Norbert HOSTYN), La cabine roulante sur la plage
, Lydia M.A. Schoonbaert (ed.), James Ensor (Musée du Petit Palais Paris), Paris-Musées 1990, p. 87. Jeroen Cornilly, Het verlangen naar zee. Tweehonderd jaar vakantie en bouwen aan zee, Gent: Uitgeverij Tijdsbeeld, 2024, p. 27 ff.
2James Ensor. Liste de mes œuvres (manuscript), KMSKA Archives, JE.
3James Ensor, Ma vie en abrégé
(1934), Mes écrits ou les suffisances matamoresques, (Hugo Martin ed.), Brussels : Editions Labor, 1999, p. 253-54.
4Xavier Tricot, James Ensor Leven en Werk. Oeuvrecatalogus, Brussel: Mercatorfonds, 2009, nr.30.
5Eric Min, James Ensor. Een biografie, Antwerpen: Meulenhof-Manteau, 2008, p. 30.
6Herwig Todts, James Ensor, Occasional Modernist. Ensor’s Artistic and Social Ideas and the Interpretation of his Art, (XIX: Studies in 19th-Century Art and Visual Culture), Turnhout: Brepols, 2018, p. 351 ff. Tricot 2009, p. 230 ff.
7Robert HOOZEE, L’univers d’Ensor: paysages, intérieurs, natures mortes 1880 – 1887
, Lydia M. A. SCHOONBAERT (ed.), James Ensor, O.c., p.21.
8Robert HOOZEE, Het landschap in de Belgische kunst 1830 – 1914, Museum voor Schone Kunsten Gent, 1980, p. 210.
9Diane LESKO, James Ensor. The Creative Years, Princeton University Press, 1985, p. 3: Introduction: cabin on the beach
.
1 Chicago: KMSKA. Research Bathing Hut.
Last modified September 20, 2024, https://kmska.be/en/osc/bathing-hut-beach.
2 MLA: KMSKA. Research Bathing Hut.
Online Scholarly Catalogue, last modified September 20, 2024, https://kmska.be/en/osc/bathing-hut-beach.
La liste de mes oeuvres(
The list of my works) for a new book on his work published by Grégoire Le Roy in 1922. He added a short note to the first page of his manuscript which reads as follows:
From 1875 to 1877, marine paintings and landscapes around Ostend. 1878, Compositions. Biblical scenes.2 The earliest of Ensor’s known works were only discovered after his death. One of them was found in the collection of French lawyer Albert Croquez (1886-1949). On the back of this little work, Ensor wrote:
A mon ami Croquez (…) Un de mes premiers essais en 1873(To my friend Croquez [...] One of my first attempts in 1873). Some thirty early works of this sort are known to us. Their authenticity rests on their provenance. This is not the case of the dozens of nature studies known as the
cartons roses, painted on rectangular pieces of pink cardboard with their front sides covered in a white preparatory layer. In Ma vie en abrégé of 1934, Ensor recounts that he painted views of nature around Ostend at the age of fifteen.
Ces petites oeuvres sans prétention, peintes au pétrole sur carton rose me charment encore(
I am still charmed by these small, unpretentious works painted in petrol on pink cardboard).3 During the 1920s, Ensor painted larger copies of four of these nature studies on canvas. He chose a few examples from the
cartons rosesseries to exhibit at the large retrospective of his works at the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels in 1929.4
cartons roseshave been identified to date. They are all painted with the same sort of standard painters’ materials. It is intriguing, but highly unlikely, that Ensor used petrol for these works, despite his claims to have done so. Petrol was sometimes used for cleaning painting supplies or thinning oil paint.
D’après nature / Dunes et mer calme / 5 avril / 1876 / matin(
From nature / Dunes and calm sea / 5 April / 1876 / morning). Not all of these studies are dated precisely but they were often numbered. The logic behind the numbering for the complete series is unclear, but on the basis of the numbering, we know that the whole series comprised some forty pieces painted over the course of the spring, summer and autumn of 1876. The dates are not always reliable either. The back of the bathing hut painting is inscribed:
Dimanche 29 juillet 1876 / Voiture baignore / n° 22 n° 23 / Après-midi(
Sunday 29 July 1876 / Bathing hut / n° 22 n° 23 / Afternoon). But in 1876, 29 July did not fall on a Sunday, but on a Saturday. We do not know whether Ensor sometimes made mistakes or only added the inscriptions at a later date.6
cartons rosesremained scholastic and hesitantly painted, but nonetheless he believed that studies such as Bathing Hut on the Beach testified to Ensor's
sharp powers of observation and great sensitivity to light.8
a mood of quiet mystery that imbues the painting with the suggestion of autobiographical content. The bathing hut is like a
shell hiding a silent inhabitant who shies away from exposing himself to dangerand thus, according to Lesko, represents Ensor's own anxious solitude.9
La cabine roulante sur la plage, Lydia M.A. SCHOOONBAERT (ed.), James Ensor (Musée du Petit Palais Paris), Paris-Musées 1990, p. 87.
La liste de mes oeuvres(
The list of my works) for a new book on his work published by Grégoire Le Roy in 1922. He added a short note to the first page of his manuscript which reads as follows:
From 1875 to 1877, marine paintings and landscapes around Ostend. 1878, Compositions. Biblical scenes.2 The earliest of Ensor’s known works were only discovered after his death. One of them was found in the collection of French lawyer Albert Croquez (1886-1949). On the back of this little work, Ensor wrote:
A mon ami Croquez (…) Un de mes premiers essais en 1873(To my friend Croquez [...] One of my first attempts in 1873). Some thirty early works of this sort are known to us. Their authenticity rests on their provenance. This is not the case of the dozens of nature studies known as the
cartons roses, painted on rectangular pieces of pink cardboard with their front sides covered in a white preparatory layer. In Ma vie en abrégé of 1934, Ensor recounts that he painted views of nature around Ostend at the age of fifteen.
Ces petites oeuvres sans prétention, peintes au pétrole sur carton rose me charment encore(
I am still charmed by these small, unpretentious works painted in petrol on pink cardboard).3 During the 1920s, Ensor painted larger copies of four of these nature studies on canvas. He chose a few examples from the
cartons rosesseries to exhibit at the large retrospective of his works at the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels in 1929.4
cartons roseshave been identified to date. They are all painted with the same sort of standard painters’ materials. It is intriguing, but highly unlikely, that Ensor used petrol for these works, despite his claims to have done so. Petrol was sometimes used for cleaning painting supplies or thinning oil paint.
D’après nature / Dunes et mer calme / 5 avril / 1876 / matin(
From nature / Dunes and calm sea / 5 April / 1876 / morning). Not all of these studies are dated precisely but they were often numbered. The logic behind the numbering for the complete series is unclear, but on the basis of the numbering, we know that the whole series comprised some forty pieces painted over the course of the spring, summer and autumn of 1876. The dates are not always reliable either. The back of the bathing hut painting is inscribed:
Dimanche 29 juillet 1876 / Voiture baignore / n° 22 n° 23 / Après-midi(
Sunday 29 July 1876 / Bathing hut / n° 22 n° 23 / Afternoon). But in 1876, 29 July did not fall on a Sunday, but on a Saturday. We do not know whether Ensor sometimes made mistakes or only added the inscriptions at a later date.6
cartons rosesremained scholastic and hesitantly painted, but nonetheless he believed that studies such as Bathing Hut on the Beach testified to Ensor's
sharp powers of observation and great sensitivity to light.8
a mood of quiet mystery that imbues the painting with the suggestion of autobiographical content. The bathing hut is like a
shell hiding a silent inhabitant who shies away from exposing himself to dangerand thus, according to Lesko, represents Ensor's own anxious solitude.9
La cabine roulante sur la plage, Lydia M.A. SCHOOONBAERT (ed.), James Ensor (Musée du Petit Palais Paris), Paris-Musées 1990, p. 87.
