Death Chasing the Flock of Mortals, 1896

Hunted by skeletons equipped with scythes, a herd of people throngs through the narrow streets of a city. Everyone seems to fall prey to the scythe man who hovers menacingly above the crowd: authorities, clergy, soldiers, shopkeepers, workers, etc. Death not only creeps into the building, where an orgy is in progress, but also strikes at the pregnant woman on the right-hand side of the balcony. Under a smirking irony, two groups float at the top left and right, perhaps symbolising heaven and hell. The skeleton is given a central role here for the first time in Ensor's work. The depiction fits into a tradition dating back to the Middle Ages of the triumph of death. In this relatively small etching, he combines this theme with an abundance of Ensorian motifs. He possibly derived the crowd from the recurring social unrest in the 1880s. The theme of death recurs more or less intensely in Ensor's work from 1887, the year in which his father and grandmother died. Apart from a few details, the etching is identical to the drawing of the same name from 1887 (Antwerp, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 2741).