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Lot Essay
The Ensor Advisory Committee is pleased to give a positive opinion regarding the authorship of this painting.
The characters of a masked ball appear in a garden framed, like a stage, by tall trees. At the centre a couple, dressed in costumes from the commedia dell'arte, are dancing while spectators appear at the left and right edges of the frame. The scene freely recreates the spirit of the 18th century. The Fêtes galantes of Lancret, Fragonard, and especially of Watteau, whose works fascinated Ensor from very early on, and inspired him for a long series of variations.
Watteau's gentle sweetness seems at first sight very distant from the macabre humour we associate with Ensor. But he shared with the great rococo master a sense of crepuscular melancholy touched by death, as well as his love for the theatre, the masks and elaborate sceneries, and the concept of life as a type of fantastic ballet. Ensor’s first Jardin d’Amour was a dry-point of 1888 based on the lost painting of Watteau, Les Jaloux, and the artist returned many times to the subject between 1910 and 1930.
The apparitions in this garden are, as Ensor himself would say, "figures of love, of reverie, musical". Nothing is defined or tangible; everything becomes phantasmagorical in the hazy harmony of pastel colours. The grass, the trees and the sky blend into a greenish blue atmosphere. The figures, insinuated with light warm marks (red, pink, yellow.) with shaky outlines, come out of the iridescent colour and dissolve immediately, as ephemeral as the notes of a melody or the steps of a dance.
The characters of a masked ball appear in a garden framed, like a stage, by tall trees. At the centre a couple, dressed in costumes from the commedia dell'arte, are dancing while spectators appear at the left and right edges of the frame. The scene freely recreates the spirit of the 18th century. The Fêtes galantes of Lancret, Fragonard, and especially of Watteau, whose works fascinated Ensor from very early on, and inspired him for a long series of variations.
Watteau's gentle sweetness seems at first sight very distant from the macabre humour we associate with Ensor. But he shared with the great rococo master a sense of crepuscular melancholy touched by death, as well as his love for the theatre, the masks and elaborate sceneries, and the concept of life as a type of fantastic ballet. Ensor’s first Jardin d’Amour was a dry-point of 1888 based on the lost painting of Watteau, Les Jaloux, and the artist returned many times to the subject between 1910 and 1930.
The apparitions in this garden are, as Ensor himself would say, "figures of love, of reverie, musical". Nothing is defined or tangible; everything becomes phantasmagorical in the hazy harmony of pastel colours. The grass, the trees and the sky blend into a greenish blue atmosphere. The figures, insinuated with light warm marks (red, pink, yellow.) with shaky outlines, come out of the iridescent colour and dissolve immediately, as ephemeral as the notes of a melody or the steps of a dance.