DURING 1885-86 ENSOR BECAME INCREASINGLY
preoccupied with the portrayal of Christ. This resulted
in the group of five large-scale drawings and one paint-
ing of the life of Christ entitled Visions: The Aureoles of
Christ or the Feelings of Light, which he sent to the
Brussels exhibition of the avant-garde artists' group Les
XX (Les Vingt) in 1887. The centerpiece was the third
drawing in the series, The Lively and Radiant: The Entry
into Jerusalem (Ghent, Museum voor Schone Kunsten
inv. I9Ó3-E), which measures 2 by i y 2 meters and was ex-
ecuted in 1886. The Getty study is preparatory to the
large drawing and, despite its far smaller scale, corre-
sponds to the finished work in surprising detail. Its
rough, linear technique establishes the structure of the
composition and imbues the whole with tumultuous en-
ergy. This gives way in the finished version to a sense of
life emanating from visionary effects of luminosity and
shadow achieved through the softer, richer handling of
black and brown chalk.
The Ernest Rousseau collection formerly contained
the Getty drawing as well as the studies for Christ Shown
to the People (Dusseldorf, Kunstmuseum inv. K. 1983-74)
and Christ Ascending to Heaven (art market, Zurich). Due
to their similar measurements, it has been proposed that
they were all probably made in 1885 and might have orig-
inally been conceived as a triptych, as such forming the
kernel around which the Aureoles eventually developed
(Hoozee, Bown-Taevernier, andHeijbroek 1987, p. 62).
Unpublished heretofore is Christ Bearing the Cross, on the
verso of the present drawing, which suggests that Ensor
possibly contemplated including this subject in the Au-
reoles. Moreover S. Goddard has discovered that the
small sketch of the woman and child on the verso is de-
rived from Adriaen van Ostade's etching The Family of
IÓ47,^1 a work that also inspired Ensor's drawing in the
1888 catalogue of the annual exhibition of Les XX.^2 The
recto of the Getty drawing is among the earliest depic-
tions of a theme that would eventually evolve into the
painting Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889 (Malibu, J.
Paul Getty Museum).1. F. W. H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings,
and Woodcuts (Amsterdam, n.d.), vol. 15, no. 46.- My thanks to S. Goddard for informing me of his previ-
ously unpublished discovery in a letter of May 1991.
ENSOR • FLEMISH SCHOOL 197