Skull with Burning Cigarette by Van Gogh Poster

About the Work Skull with Burning Cigarette (1885) Skull with Burning Cigarette (Dutch: Kop van een skelet met brandende sigaret) is an undated painting by Vincent van Gogh, part of the permanent collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It was probably painted in the winter of 1885–86 as a humourous comment on conservative academic practices, an assumption based on the fact that van Gogh was in Antwerp at that time, attending classes at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, classes he would later say were boring and taught him nothing. About the Artist Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: [ˈvɪnsɛnt ˈʋɪləɱ vɑŋ ˈɣɔχ] 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work, noteable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty and bold colour, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died aged 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted (although no gun was ever found). His work was then known to only a handful of people and appreciated by fewer still. Van Gogh began to draw as a child, and he continued to draw throughout the years that led up to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints. His work included self portraits, landscapes, still lifes, portraits and paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers. Van Gogh spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers, travelling between The Hague, London and Paris, after which he taught for a time in England. One of his early aspirations was to become a pastor and from 1879 he worked as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium where he began to sketch people from the local community. In 1885, he painted his first major work The Potato Eaters. His palette at the time consisted mainly of sombre earth tones and showed no sign of the vivid coloration that distinguished his later work. In March 1886, he moved to Paris and discovered the French Impressionists. Later, he moved to the south of France and was influenced by the strong sunlight he found there. His work grew brighter in colour, and he developed the unique and highly recognisable style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in 1888. The extent to which his mental health affected his painting has been a subject of speculation since his death. Despite a widespread tendency to romanticise his ill health, modern critics see an artist deeply frustrated by the inactivity and incoherence brought about by his bouts of illness. According to art critic Robert Hughes, Van Gogh's late works show an artist at the height of his ability, completely in control and "longing for concision and grace“. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh