Despite spending his whole professional life in the Belgian seaside town of Ostend, James Ensor exerted considerable influence on the development of Expressionism, and was very successful in his lifetime. An innovator and an outsider, he rebelled against the conservative art teachings of the late 19th-century Academy in Brussels, drawn instead to the avant-garde salons where his radical creative vision could thrive. Equally adept in painting, drawing and printmaking, his work defies categorisation and convention. Ensor remains largely unknown in the UK, despite having a British father, and his work is underrepresented in national collections.