Head of a Skeleton with a Burning Cigarette

Stone walls, worn steps, cool cellar light. Picture Van Gogh's grinning skeleton greeting you at the bottom of the stairs.

Head of a Skeleton with a Burning Cigarette by Vincent van Gogh is a student's joke with a dark edge. An ivory skull and shoulders loom out of a brown-black background, and a lit cigarette sits clamped between the teeth. Look closely at the ember. It is the only warm thing in the picture. This is a memento mori, a reminder of death, with a wicked grin. Ivory bone and one glowing ember against brown-black shadow, darkly funny and stark.

Van Gogh painted it in the winter of 1885 to 1886, while studying at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Students there drew skeletons for weeks before they were allowed a living model, and he found the classes deadly dull. So he gave the skeleton a cigarette. He was a lifelong smoker, already in poor health, which makes the joke more tender. Van Gogh stayed in Antwerp only a few months before leaving for Paris and his brother Theo. The small original, only 32 cm tall, hangs in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

The look

Ivory bone, a glowing ember and deep brown-black shadow. Darkly funny, stark and instantly recognisable. Memento mori wall art suited to a dark academia study, a goth bedroom or a hallway gallery wall.

Gifting

A witty gift for a birthday, a graduation or a new study. Van Gogh at his most irreverent.

More like this

More memento mori in our Gothic Memento Mori Art collection: Memento Mori by William Harnett, Garden of Death by Hugo Simberg and Allegory of Death by Tomás Mondragón.