Skull with Burning Cigarette

Catalogue numbers: F 212, JH 999.

This painting is in many ways the key Antwerp picture by van Gogh. He was mocking the procedure in drawing classes, where a skeleton invariably served as the basis of anatomical studies. The lifelessness of the skeleton represented the very opposite of what van Gogh wanted a picture to express. With the burning cigarette jammed in its teeth, the skeleton, though still nothing but dead bones, has acquired a grotesquely funny hint of life.