?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
JAMES ENSOR Le Christ insulté.
Etching on simili Japon paper, 1886. 232x155 mm; 9⅛x6 inches, full margins. Second state (of 2), with the signature and date lower left. Signed, titled and dated in pencil, lower margin. A brilliant, richly-inked impression of this extremely scarce, early etching.
This is Ensor's first etching, made shortly before his most productive year as a printmaker (in 1888 he created 45 etchings, one third of his total printed oeuvre).
Ensor (1860-1949) was a founding member of the avant-garde artist group Les XX in 1884. When Whistler's name came up for inclusion in Les XX in 1886, Ensor opposed it on the grounds that his work was already passé. Nevertheless, in this etching and others by Ensor, his use of short, choppy lines to create a sense of motion and shimmering light is indebted to Whistler's etchings, particularly his Venice views (which coincidentally had been exhibited at Les XX in 1884). Delteil 1; Elesh 1; Taevernier 1.
