James Ensor, Esqueletos
calentándose, 1889, óleo sobre tela, 75 x 60 cm. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
(Texas, EEUU)
“Belonging to a
group of closely related paintings from the late 1880s, the enigmatic Skeletons
Warming Themselves is among the artist’s masterpieces. He has placed three
dressed-up skeletons in the foreground around a stove on which is written “Pas
de feu” and under it “en trouverez vous demain?”—“No fire. Will you find any
tomorrow?” The skeletons are accompanied by a palette and brush, a violin, and
a lamp. Presumably Ensor intended these items to symbolize art, music, and
literature. If so, the probable implication is that artistic inspiration, or
patronage to support it, has expired. Understood as a scene in an artist’s
studio, Skeletons Warming Themselves resembles a vignette from the popular
medieval and early Renaissance print cycles of the Dance of Death, each print
portraying skeletons as an allegorical comment on the vanities of a particular
profession or social type”
https://www.kimbellart.org/collection-object/skeletons-warming-themselves
