JAMES ENSOR (1860-1949) F. GAILLARD MONTEUR... Lot 34

JAMES ENSOR (1860-1949) F. GAILLARD MONTEUR DE BALLETS VERMEILS ET MUSICAUX, AUGUST 1938 Oil on panel Signed and dated '38' lower left Partially legible dedication on the reverse Oil on panel; signed and dated '38' lower left; dedication partially readable on the reverse 13,6 x 18 CM - 5 3/8 x 7 1/8 IN. Mr. Xavier Tricot has confirmed the authenticity of this work, we thank him for his kind collaboration. PROVENANCE Collection François Gaillard, Belgium. Ostend, Galerie Atelier. Brussels, Willy d'Huysser Gallery. Sale, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 17 May 1977, lot 517. Private collection, Belgium. EXHIBITIONS James Ensor, Gallerie Civiche d'Arte Moderna, Ferrara, Palazzo Massari, 21 June - 30 September 1986, n° 17. Tire-la-langue, un pays d'irréguliers, Centre culturel de la communauté française : Le Botanique, from September 27th to November 11th 1990. BIBLIOGRAPHY Xavier Tricot, James Ensor, his life, his work, catalogue raisonné of paintings, Fonds Mercator, Brussels: 2009, n° 782, p. 409 (described and reproduced in colour). RELATED WORKS James Ensor (1860-1949), Aux bonnes couleurs du roi du zinc, F. Pisart il se nomme, July 1938, oil on panel, 24 x 19 CM, Université de Liège, Belgium. Former collection of Fernand Pisart (1877-1942), a great industrialist from Liège and collector of James Ensor. James Ensor (1860-1949), La gamme d'amour, portfolio of 21 lithographs, published by Un coup de dés, Brussels: 1929, 25 x 32,5 CM. Plate 'Puérilla et Pollen'. François Gaillard was born in Verviers around 1885, he studied at the music school where he was second conductor at the Grand Theatre from 1906 to 1909. Later he became first conductor of the Tournai opera. From 1910 to 1914 he returned to his home town as an opera conductor. Afterwards, he took over the direction of French theatres in Troyes, Sète and Montpellier, then the Théâtre des Arts in Rouen. In 1923, he became director of the Théâtre Royal de Liège, where he remained until 1933. The work we are presenting was performed and offered by Ensor to François Gaillard to thank him for having staged La Gamme d'amour. This ballet, whose text, music, costumes and scenery were created in 1907 by James Ensor, was a great success. "Whoever catches Ensor upstairs at work sees him emerge from a tangle of disparate objects: masks, rags, withered branches, shells, cups, pots, worn rugs, books lying on the floor, prints piled on chairs, empty frames leaning against furniture, and the inevitable skull and crossbones staring at all of this with the two empty holes of his absent eyes. A friendly dust covers and protects these thousand baroque objects from the sudden and untimely gesture of visitors. They are at home so that only the painter breathes life into them, questions them, makes them speak and introduces them into art thanks to the sympathy that devotes to them and the secret eloquence that he discovers in their silence. It is appropriate to imagine James Ensor in a daily and prolonged tête-à-tête with his cardboard and plaster effigies, with these debris of existence and splendour, with his dull or violent disguises, in order to understand some of the surprises of his character and some of the profound and special traits of his art. It is certain that for him, at such times of sovereign illusion, such an assemblage of faces, attitudes, ironies or distresses must have represented life. It appeared to him bad, deplorable, hostile. It taught him misanthropy, which only farce, laughter and sarcasm can correct." Émile Verhaeren, James Ensor, Marguerite Waknine, Angoulême: 2021. "Ah, we must see them, the masks, under our great opal skies and when, smeared with cruel colors, they evolve miserably, the spine bent, pitiful under the rain, terrified characters, both insolent and timid, growling or yelping..." James Ensor