James Ensor, Peintre & Graveur; texte par Blanche Rousseau ... [et al.] Avec 111 illustrations de J. Ensor. - INCLUDING AN ORIGINAL LITHOGRAPH

Paris: Librairie de la Société Anonyme "La Plume". 1899. Collection of essays on the work of the Belgian printmaker and painter who was an important early influence on expressionism and surrealism, the first publication devoted to his work. The contributing authors include many important Belgian and French figures, especially of the Les XX group and the Symbolist movement: artists Edgar Baes, Georges Lemmen, and Constantin Meunier; writers Louis Delattre, Max Elskamp, André Fontainas, Théodore Hannon, Hubert Krains, Camille Lemonier, Maurice Maeterlinck, Camille Mauclair, Pol de Mont, Maurice Des Ombiaux, Georges Rency, Octave Uzanne, and Emile Verhaeren; art historian Arnold Goffin; and lawyers and writers Octave Maus and Edmond Picard. Black and white illustrations of his engravings and paintings throughout. Cover with color illustration; frontispiece lithograph prined in green. 96 pp. Toning; overall in very good condition. 7.25 x 10 inches (18.5 x 25.3 cm).

The cover illustration shows one of Ensor's favorite themes: figures dressed in the carnival masks which were sold in his family's shop, directly below his studio. The bright palette is typical of his work from the 1880's, a period which culminated in his famous and most ambitious painting, the immense Christ's Entry Into Brussels in 1889, a forerunner of the Expressionist movement. James Ensor is considered to be an innovator in 19th-century art. Although he stood apart from other artists of his time, he significantly influenced such 20th-century artists as Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, George Grosz, Alfred Kubin, Wols, Felix Nussbaum, and other expressionist and surrealist painters of the 20th century. (14981)

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