The Oyster Eater is an oil painting executed in 1882 by the Belgian Expressionist artist James Ensor which is now in the collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.

[1] However the painting was refused by the Antwerp Salon of 1882, possibly because of the sexual overtones suggested by a single young woman eating oysters, then considered an aphrodisiac.

When also rejected by the alternative exhibitors l'Essor the following year, Ensor and his associates were provoked into establishing their own group, Les XX, to hold their own exhibitions of avant-garde works.

The scene is set in their parental home in Ostend, which can still be visited today as the Ensor House Museum.

[4] It soon becomes clear that the artist did not want to make an unambiguous portrait of his sister in her familiar environment.