About this work
A skeleton reclines in an armchair within an ornate interior, attentively contemplating the surrounding artwork that depicts chinoiseries. The scene is one of disarming domesticity — a wallpapered room, structured by the vertical lines of wallpaper with chinoiserie motifs, that reads at first glance as a cosy bourgeois interior. Infrared photography and X-rays have revealed that under the skeleton's head there was originally the realistic face of an old man; in the lower left corner, Ensor added another skull that looks directly toward the spectator.
Amidst the abundance of details and the opulence of the bedroom colours, the onlooker may not immediately notice the death's head of the central figure — and that delayed recognition only deepens the effect: we find ourselves confronted by a figure whose place has been imperceptibly taken by death.
The palette is muted and somber, enhancing the eerie and contemplative mood, while the brushstrokes remain loose and impressionistic, directing attention toward atmosphere and symbolic weight rather than precise detail.
The painting exists in two temporal layers. It constitutes a turning point in Ensor's œuvre: he introduces the iconographic motif of the skeleton and leaves behind the impressionistic depiction of reality he had practised until then.
The painting gives us a view into a room in which a figure is looking at a Japanese — not Chinese, despite the title — picture book, and around 1888 Ensor had the habit of reworking his paintings and giving them a new and fantastic content.
The work marked the beginning of a sombre period for Ensor, induced by rejection among fellow painters and critics, but also by his inner demons, family quarrels, and the deaths in quick succession of his father and maternal grandmother.
In Ensor's work the concept of *vanitas* — the transitory nature of earthly existence — often appeared, and he fluidly combined the macabre skeleton with the grotesque.
The skull neither worries the viewer nor mocks its subject: the intimate atmosphere and magical beauty of the oriental colours are not disturbed so much as subtly menaced, rendering the intimacy and beauty all the more vulnerable.
On a wall, this painting rewards those willing to sit with its slow reveal. It belongs in a room with considered, unhurried light — a study, a reading room, a living space where things have been deliberately chosen rather than quickly decorated. The warm tones of the interior hold well against dark or neutral walls, and the vertical orientation gives it a quiet commanding presence without demanding the whole room. It speaks to collectors drawn to art that operates on two registers simultaneously: the comfortable and the unsettling, beauty laced with mortality.
