Vincent van Gogh · 1885–86
Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette
Posters from $15 · Canvas from $39
Van Gogh's darkly comic art-school joke — a yellowed skeleton's skull with a lit cigarette dangling from its teeth. The most metal painting in the 19th century. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
Up to 12 × 16 in · portrait
Size
Larger sizes are unavailable for this painting because the source scan's resolution wouldn't print at gallery quality.
Format & finish
Archival cotton canvas stretched over a wooden frame. Ready to hang as-is. No external frame.
Scale next to a 5'10" person
+ tax at checkout
The story of Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette
Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette is an early work by Vincent van Gogh. The small and undated oil-on-canvas painting featuring a skeleton and cigarette is part of the permanent collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It was most likely painted in the winter of 1885–86 as a satirical comment on conservative academic practices. Before it was common to use live humans as models, the academic routine included the study of skeletons to develop an understanding of human anatomy. Van Gogh was in Antwerp, Belgium at that time attending classes at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, which he later said were boring and taught him nothing.
Adapted from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. His suicide at 37 followed years of mental illness and poverty.
All Vincent van Gogh prints →Biography adapted from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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