Name: JAMES ENSOR (1860-1949)
Brand: Diables rossant anges et archanges ('Devils thrashing Angels and Archangels')
Price: 2400.00 GBP
Availability: InStock

JAMES ENSOR (1860-1949)
Diables rossant anges et archanges ('Devils thrashing Angels and Archangels')
etching
1888
on Japon nacré paper
signed, dated 1939, and dedicated in pencil Pour Robert Goffin une griffe de son ami James Ensor le peintre des hautes mers des anges et des démons amers
a fine, tonal impression of the only state
with margins, a deckle edge below, probably the full sheet
some pale foxing
otherwise in very good condition
Plate 26,4 x 30.8 cm. (10³⁄₈ x 12¹⁄₈ in.)
Sheet 33,5 x 40,5 cm. (13¹⁄₄ x 16 in.)

Robert Goffin (1898-1984), Belgium & New York, a gift from the artist in 1939.
Hauswedell & Nolte, Hamburg, 14 June 2003, lot 1140.
Acquired at the above sale; then by descent to present owners.

L. Delteil, Le Peintre-Graveur Illustré (XIXe et XXe Siècles) - Tome XIX: Henri Leys - Henri de Braekeleer - James Ensor, Paris, 1925, no. 23 (another impression ill.).
A. Croquez, L'œuvre gravé de James Ensor, Paris, 1935, no. 24 (another impression ill.).
A. Taevernier, James Ensor - catalogue illustré de ses gravures, leur description critique et l'inventaire des plaques, Ghent, 1973, no. 23, pp. 72-73 (another impression ill.).
J. Elesh, James Ensor - The Complete Graphic Work, The Illustrated Bartsch, New York, 1982, no. 23, p. 108; ill. pp. 43-45 (another impression ill.).

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Lot Essay

The present print was given by Ensor to his friend, the lawyer, writer and cultural historian Robert Goffin. A vocal critic of Nazi Germany, he predicted the German invasion of Belgium and emigrated to the USA at the beginning of World War II. Ensor’s dedication to him is dated 1939, indicating that he gave it to Goffin shortly before his departure to New York. As a cultural scholar, Goffin was particularly interested in Jazz music and wrote one of the earliest scholarly texts on the subject, Aux Frontières du Jazz, in 1932. He continued his studies and publications on the subject during his exile in the USA. In 1942, he collaborated with the British pianist Leonard Feather (1914 – 1994) to teach the first university course on the history and theory of Jazz at the New School for Social Research in New York, and a year later published another important text on Jazz history: Jazz, From the Congo to the Metropolitan.
After the war, he returned to his native Belgium and resumed his career as a lawyer.
We can only speculate why Ensor chose Diables rossant des anges et archanges as a present for his friend but one would think that the loose, sketchy and seemingly improvised composition of this plate would have appealed to Goffin’s jazz sensibility.
Many of the details of this print are inspired by the fantastical creatures of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, but also of Jacques Callot’s Tentation de Saint Antoine, while its deliberate, tapestry-like flatness shows the influence of folk and non-Western art.