James Ensor

This engaging volume describes the creation and restoration of the extraordinary large-scale drawing The Temptation of Saint Anthony – a work by late 19th-century Belgian artist James Ensor (1860-1949) that is composed of fifty-one sheets of paper collaged into a hallucinatory social critique and artist's manifesto. Each sheet of the nearly six-foot-high work is reproduced at actual size, revealing Ensor's remarkable technique and fertile imagination. Here, Saint Anthony is surrounded not with nature – as customary – but with the moral decay of society. Replete with tiny scenes depicting both sexual temptation and spiritual piety, Ensor splices potent imagery from travelogues, popular science and technology magazines into a Symbolist masterpiece. Susan M. Canning and Kimberly J. Nichols recount the fascinating tale that led to the work's restoration and first public showing in more than sixty years.