Sarah Van Ooteghem – författare

While Belgian artist James Ensor (1860–1949) is forever associated with his seaside hometown of Ostend, it was in the bustling capital of Brussels that he thrived as an artist and emerged as a central figure in the European avant-garde.The young painter settled in the city in 1877 and considered Brussels his second home until the turn of the century. This lavishly illustrated book explores the allure of Brussels, taking readers on a journey to discover the pivotal places, encounters and events that shaped Ensor as both an artist and a human being. With the master as a guide, the Belgian capital unfolds as a melting pot of prosperous bourgeois and struggling bohemians, conservative critics and rebellious artists, lively theatres and shadowy cafés.This publication showcases more than two hundred works by Ensor from the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR) and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (RMFAB). These comprehensive collections date back to the 1890s, representing the oldest public holdings of the ‘painter of masks’

The Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels houses the largest collection of drawings in the country. Among its highlights are works by leading artists of the Low Countries, including Pieter Bruegel I, Joris Hoefnagel, Hendrick Goltzius, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Jacques Jordaens.As the library’s collection has been little studied up to now, it is largely unknown to scholars and the general public. To acquaint a wider audience with these important works of art, this richly illustrated publication brings together for the first time over one hundred master drawings from the Royal Library’s vaults. Not only new art-historical insights are presented, but also numerous rediscovered drawings and revised attributions to artists such as Maarten van Heemskerck and Karel van Mander.This carefully researched book, written by thirty specialists in the field, aims to make a significant contribution to our knowledge of the history of Netherlandish drawing from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.Distributed for Hannibal Books