Peculiar Insects

In the print Peculiar Insects, Ensor refers to a passage from "Die Launen der Verliebten" by Henrich Heine, in which a beetle is in love with a fly. The dragonfly on the left, with Mariette Rousseau's head, looks in the direction of a beetle with Ensor's head, which is staring shyly ahead. With this print Ensor is probably alluding to…

In the print Peculiar Insects, Ensor refers to a passage from "Die Launen der Verliebten" by Henrich Heine, in which a beetle is in love with a fly. The dragonfly on the left, with Mariette Rousseau's head, looks in the direction of a beetle with Ensor's head, which is staring shyly ahead. With this print Ensor is probably alluding to an intimate relationship he had with Mariette. Her image appears in various works together with that of Ensor. The print was probably based on a photo from 1888, in which they are posing together in the garden of the building at the rue Vautier nr. 20 in Brussels. In the article "Ensor intime", published in the magazine La Plume in 1898, Blanche Rousseau, a cousin of the family, told of a meeting at the home of the Rousseaus, where Ernest Rousseau junior read a passage from Heine's "Die Launen der Verliebten" in the presence of Ensor. Five states of this drypoint exist in which Ensor provided the dragonfly with the long abdomen and elaborated the beetle. He also added a second beetle and a figure in the building on the right.