The artist's mother in death

Ensor's mother died on 8 March 1915. She was 80 years old, her son was 55 at the time. We do not know how we should picture the relationship between Ensor as a middle-aged man who was starting to gain honour and fame and his ageing mother, but in the 1880s and 1890s relations were in any case very difficult. Ensor drew his mother at least four times in the doors and days after her death. In this painting the deathbed has been moved to the back of the painting. It is a very graphically elaborated portrait of the dead mother, whose emaciated head, sunken head and sharp nose are marked by illness and decay. The foreground is occupied by a still life with pillboxes and medicine bottles in a composition that is reminiscent of Ensor's magnificent still life paintings from the 1880s. Next to the still life is a baroque cupboard with a statue of a saint on top. Together they symbolise medicine and religion's lost battle against death.