Village Fair at the Windmill, 1889

Ensor usually based his etchings on his own drawings, or derived certain motifs from them. As far as is known, however, Ensor drew few landscapes. In view of the relatively large number of landscape etchings (about 20), it seems as if the artist went straight into nature with the etching plate. Ensor etched a few faces in the woods around Ostend and made a series of polder landscapes with villages, detached houses or windmills: Mariakerke, Leffinge, Slijkens and Oudenburg. It is possible that the mill of Oudenburg, a village in the vicinity of Ostend, is depicted here. Ensor built a classical-looking landscape around the central motif, with a dark foreground and minuscule figures in the middle plot.