"Avec le noble crayon...": lettres de James Ensor à la famille Rousseau

Abstract

From 1883, the painter and engraver James Ensor (1860-1949) maintained with the Rousseau family, settled in Brussels, an important correspondence spread over several decades, which testifies to a sincere friendship. Ernest Rousseau, professor of physics who became rector of the Free University of Brussels, and his wife, the mycologist Mariette Hannon, exercised a happy influence on the young artist from Ostend, helping to broaden his network within the cultural world of the capital. Their son Ernest also nurtured an obvious complicity with James. The Rousseaus are the confidants of the artist's anxieties, doubts and outbursts of enthusiasm, and are among his main patrons. Preserved in the Archives of Contemporary Art in Belgium, this uncrossed correspondence, which has remained in largely unpublished, brings together nearly 400 letters, letter cards, postcards and autograph business cards by James Ensor for the most part, a few letters being also written by his sister Marie. This epistolary set lifts the veil on many aspects both of the artist's life and of his painted and engraved work. Its full transcription is accompanied here by a richly documented critical commentary.