Nature morte au canard

Nature morte au canard (Still Life with Duck), painted in 1910 and held in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, continues Ensor's engagement with the Northern tradition of game and kitchen still lifes that runs from Flemish seventeenth-century painting through Chardin. By 1910, Ensor had passed through his most aggressively avant-garde phase and was revisiting the naturalist skills of his early career with a mature confidence and a broader, more expressive handling. The dead duck as still life subject belongs to a tradition that treats hunting trophies with careful attention to feather texture, iridescent coloring, and the limp elegance of fallen prey. Ensor's version brings his distinctive sensibility — attentive to the strangeness of objects even in conventional subjects — to a time-honored compositional motif.

The challenge of the duck's plumage — iridescent, complex, requiring differentiation of many subtle colors — suits Ensor's mature handling, which combines broad gestural passages with focused attention to the specific optical qualities of feathers under light. The composition likely places the bird against a kitchen or neutral setting with supporting still life elements.