James Ensor, *The Strike*, 1888

by Atelier Liesjes

A sheet of paper folded into thirds is covered in a jumble of pencil and chalk lines: a crowd squeezing its way down a street, gendarmes with drawn sabres, a man holding aloft a red flag, and here and there heads peering down from windows and a balcony. On the right, a sign in pencil reads ‘In de Zeevogel Estaminet’. Above the heads, banners flutter and a flagpole with ropes is visible, whilst a basket of bottles, hoisted by a rope, appears amongst the crowd. At the bottom, a fallen figure lies at the feet of the crowd, next to a small dog and a few washed-up shells. The creases in the paper divide the page into panels, like a leporello that you read from left to right. The drawing is swift and aggressive: blue, yellow and red chalk strokes are interwoven with pencil, hatching upon hatching, with few corrections. The result is not a news report but an image of mounting tension, in which the crowd itself plays the leading role: a seething, anonymous mass facing a row of security guards standing rigidly in formation. The composition is built up from hundreds of individual sketches that only coalesce into a single movement when viewed from a distance. Ensor depicted the 1888 strike in Ostend, yet the scene has a timeless, almost carnivalesque quality, with the same grotesque features as his mask drawings. The Expressionist portrayal of the crowd is already fully evident here. James Ensor (Ostend 1860, Ostend 1949) was a painter, draughtsman and printmaker, a member of Les XX and one of the most idiosyncratic figures in Belgian art around 1900. Alongside his masks and seascapes, he produced drawings centred on the working class and rebellion, often with the same satirical edge. His social prints and magazines form a distinct chapter in his oeuvre.