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Lot Essay
Like Ensor's paintings of masks, carnivals and skeletons, his mature still-life paintings of the1890s also magically convey a sense of a bizarre otherworldy reality. Translating the objects of daily life into a strange narrative landscape of familiar but somehow also peculiar form, Ensor's still-lifes seem to depict life as an absurd compendium of objects. Les Pêches is one of the most successful and evocative of these exquisite works. Sharply observed and sumptuous in its colourful detail, it is bathed in a bright translucent light and depicted in such a way that this procession of three peaches, passion fruit and a rose takes on something of the quality of a carnival.
Laid out in a line resting on a stone slab, the contrast between the warm pink colouring of each of these five objects and the cold blue tones of the stone slab and the background also establishes a certain whimsical eroticism. Both fruit and flowers are perennial symbols of love and sex and Ensor seems to have taken particular delight in rendering the flesh-coloured texture of each with tender accuracy. Heightening the realist techniques he had learned from Courbet's work and juxtaposing it against a shimmering almost transluscent light that bestows the work with a mysterious sense of artifice, the fleshy appearance of these simple objects is here transfigured into a bizarre and almost mystical parade.
Laid out in a line resting on a stone slab, the contrast between the warm pink colouring of each of these five objects and the cold blue tones of the stone slab and the background also establishes a certain whimsical eroticism. Both fruit and flowers are perennial symbols of love and sex and Ensor seems to have taken particular delight in rendering the flesh-coloured texture of each with tender accuracy. Heightening the realist techniques he had learned from Courbet's work and juxtaposing it against a shimmering almost transluscent light that bestows the work with a mysterious sense of artifice, the fleshy appearance of these simple objects is here transfigured into a bizarre and almost mystical parade.