Skull

Skull (1887), at the Van Gogh Museum, places Van Gogh within the long tradition of vanitas still-life painting in which the skull functions as a memento mori—a reminder of human mortality and the transience of worldly life. The tradition runs from seventeenth-century Dutch painting through Romantic and Symbolist art; Van Gogh's engagement with it during his Paris period was partly an exercise in the genre and partly a reflection of his ongoing preoccupation with death, suffering, and the spiritual significance of material existence. The skull is painted as a frank object rather than a dramatic symbol, maintaining his insistence on direct, unrhetorical observation even of charged subjects.

The skull's smooth, curved surfaces require a different approach from Van Gogh's usual textured impasto—broader, more controlled strokes that suggest the bone's hardness and the play of light across its irregular geometry. The eye sockets and nasal cavity are treated as deep shadows that anchor the composition. The palette is necessarily limited—whites, greys, ochres, and the dark of the cavities—making tonal nuance the primary technical interest.