James Ensor was born in Ostend, a small seaside town in Belgium, popular during the tourist seasons in the summer and the month preceding Lent. His grandparents had a shop selling sea shells, lace, rare stuffed fish, old books, jams and an assortment of things that were constantly being knocked over by cats, deafening parrots, and a monkey..The subjects that populate Ensor's paintings- portraits, skulls, sea life and masked "figures", often a broomstick wrapped in fabric, create the illusion for telling the tale, such as here in The Despair of Pierrot,1892.
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