Owing
to his dismissal of convention, use of the aesthetic of ugliness, simplified
colour scheme and the provocative nature of his themes, the Belgian painter
James Ensor (1860⁠–⁠1949) became a direct forerunner of Expressionism and modern
art in general. Ensor’s inclination to planar abstraction of forms was aptly
interpreted through the print medium that represented the black-and-white
antipole to his painting oeuvre. In a set of etchings, published in 1904, he
grasped the classical subject of the Seven Deadly Sins, though with an
originality of his own that rejected the traditional ways of visual
represention of this theme.