Lot Essay
Du rire aux larmes (T. 419) has a particularly interesting exhibition history.
Whilst it has not been on public show for many years, it was included in both the pivotal exhibition of Ensor's work at the Kestner-Gesellschaft in 1927 (Ensor's first show in Germany) and the largest retrospective ever mounted of Ensor's work which opened to great acclaim at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1929. It was at this show that The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889 was exhibited for the first time and Ensor was confered with the title of Baron by King Albert I of Belgium.
The picture itself belongs to a group of major works Ensor painted throughout his life on the theme of mutability incorporating the motifs of masques and the skull. The first truly major work on the subject was painted in 1888 and was owned by Ensor's great friend and patron Ernest Rousseau. Entitled Masques devant la Mort (T. 275), the picture is now housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He returned to the subject a decade later, painting La Mort et Les Masques in 1897 (T. 372, now in the Musée d'Art Moderne, Liège). There is an interesting progression in the three pictures: the first shows the masques deriding death, the second sees the masques clearly fearful of death and the third, the present picture, shows death very much the dominant figure. The title itself, Du rire aux larmes, emphasises this point.
Du rire aux larmes has not been seen in public for almost fifty years.
Whilst it has not been on public show for many years, it was included in both the pivotal exhibition of Ensor's work at the Kestner-Gesellschaft in 1927 (Ensor's first show in Germany) and the largest retrospective ever mounted of Ensor's work which opened to great acclaim at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1929. It was at this show that The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889 was exhibited for the first time and Ensor was confered with the title of Baron by King Albert I of Belgium.
The picture itself belongs to a group of major works Ensor painted throughout his life on the theme of mutability incorporating the motifs of masques and the skull. The first truly major work on the subject was painted in 1888 and was owned by Ensor's great friend and patron Ernest Rousseau. Entitled Masques devant la Mort (T. 275), the picture is now housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He returned to the subject a decade later, painting La Mort et Les Masques in 1897 (T. 372, now in the Musée d'Art Moderne, Liège). There is an interesting progression in the three pictures: the first shows the masques deriding death, the second sees the masques clearly fearful of death and the third, the present picture, shows death very much the dominant figure. The title itself, Du rire aux larmes, emphasises this point.
Du rire aux larmes has not been seen in public for almost fifty years.