Known primarily as a painter of macabre, fantastic, and often ghoulish scenes, James Ensor would still be considered a great and influential artist on the strength of his prints alone. When asked why he made etchings, Ensor replied that “the fragility of paintings frightens me, vulnerable as they are to the mishaps of the restorer, to general hazards, to the distortions of reproductions—I want to live, to speak for a long time yet to the men of tomorrow. I think of solid copper plates, of inks which cannot be altered, of simple reproductions, of faithful impressions, and therefore I have taken etchings as my means of expression.” While prints are certainly fragile in their own way, there is undoubtedly strength in their ability as multiples to disseminate an artist’s vision and point of view.
Much of Ensor’s art aimed at political and social critique and, like Goya and Daumier before him, Ensor turned to printmaking. In “The Bad Doctors” (“Les Mauvais Médecins”), Ensor lampoons the medical profession. Four bumbling doctors yielding menacing instruments and entangled in an intestinal tract ignore the bloated and eviscerated patient as the angel of death enters the room. In the bottom center of the print are the doctors’ “notes”, one of which reads: “I left sponge in the stomach. Peritonitis coming.” The doctors depicted are actually identifiable and belonged to the Faculty of Medicine at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. The critique of ineptitude and charlatanism within the medical profession is a recurring and universal theme, from Molière to Ensor to Grosz. (Leslie Jones, Associate Curator Prints and Drawings)
