The painting's brutalized characters, drawn from history, the Bible, popular culture and even Ensor's family, align the Symbolist artist with a satiric tradition that includes such earlier Northern painters as Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Bruegel.

WSJ: A Macabre Kingdom of Masks | James Ensor | Christ's Entry Into Brussels in 1889 | By Mary Tompkins Lewis

Little is known about what the ambitious young painter saw in Paris, apart from his visiting the doyen of African-American artists, the expatriate symbolist Henry Ossawa Tanner, and beginning to collect African art.

WSJ: Rising Up: Hale Woodruff's Murals From Talladega College | High Museum of Art | From Mutiny to Harmony | By Karen Wilkin

He took painting classes on the side, however, and when he was in his 20s he helped found Les Nabis, a group of symbolist painters who idolized Paul Gauguin.

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