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James Ensor (Belgian, 1860-1949)
Virgin and Socialite (with …
See original version (French)
244
-
James Ensor (Belgian, 1860-1949)
Virgin and Socialite (with …
See original version (French)
Estimate €200,000 - €300,000
Voluntary lot
Please note that this lot is subject to restrictions.
If you would like to bid on this lot, we invite you to contact the office by email at [email protected]Description
James Ensor (Belgian, 1860-1949)
Virgin and Socialite (with Alexandra Daveluy), c. 1933
Canvas.
Signed lower left.
On the back, on the stretcher: label of Guillaume Campo in Antwerp, holograph number "5272" circled, dimensions written several times, inscription: "Ensor 27 rue de Flandres Ostende".
Height 60 Width 74 cm.
Provenance: Mak van Waay
- Mak van Waay sale, Amsterdam, 8 March 1960, no. 118;
- Campo sale, Antwerp, 3 April 1963, no. 50;
- Léon Blavier collection, Liège;
- by descent, private collection, Touraine.
James Ensor. Virgin and Woman of the World (with Alexandra Daveluy). Canvas, circa 1933.
Art Loss Register, 19 January 2026, no. S00266979.
Bibliography: Xavier Tricot, James Ensor: Catalogue raisonné of paintings, Brussels, fondsmercator éditions, 2009, no. 630.
Exhibition: Brussels, Galerie Robert Finck, November 1960, no. 41.
Painted in the last years of James Ensor's life, Vierge et mondaine was part of a period of synthesis in which the artist, now established, revisited his fundamental themes with a lighter palette and more fluid subject matter.
The composition is organised around a structuring opposition: on the right, the Virgin and Child, a figure of the sacred; on the left, the "socialite", the embodiment of the profane. Between these two poles lies the painter's familiar world of masks, shells, puppets and skulls - all motifs from his mother's shop in Ostend, transposed here into ambiguous signs that are both playful and meditative. Ensor continues to reflect on illusion, vanity and social theatre.
Heir to the great Flemish tradition, from Frans Snijders to Adriaen van Utrecht, he renewed the still life by charging it with a symbolic and personal dimension. The bouquets with their imaginary botanical associations, the porcelain and heterogeneous objects make up a coded visual language, in which each element contributes to a balance that is both decorative and intellectual.
At the heart of this staging is Alexandra Daveluy, the painter's niece and close confidante, who does not appear in the other version of the painting in the Bilbao museum (n°01/16 2001). Her presence introduces an essential intimate dimension. Ensor illuminates the top of the canvas with a rainbow, an exceptional motif that he usually reserved for religious scenes. This was to emphasise the role of the woman he nicknamed "The Chinese Girl". She becomes a figure of passage, almost a mediator, between the sensible world and a form of spiritual elevation.
The context of 1933 sheds a special light on this work. Ensor, aged 73, was at the height of his fame. On 2 August, he met Albert Einstein at Coq-sur-Mer. The painter of light and the theorist of light were face to face. This coincidence, beyond the anecdotal, resonates with the very tone of the painting, shot through with a new, almost peaceful clarity.
For this painting is not just a still life, or even a symbolic composition.
It is a work of balance. Everything is there: the carnival and the sacred, derision and gravity, the object and the memory. Ensor no longer juxtaposes, he synthesises. He simplifies without impoverishing, he illuminates without dissolving. Painting becomes interior space.
Remained in the studio until the artist's death, only revealed in 1960 before being acquired in 1963, this work retains the character of a painting with a key, long kept, almost withheld. It foreshadows the artist's final self-portraits, in which Ensor portrays himself in a transfigured light. Here, nothing is demonstrative. Everything is suggested. And that is precisely the strength of this accomplished painter, whose motto is :
Pro luce nobilis sum.
I am noble by light.
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
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