Painted in Antwerp, Jan. - Feb. 1886. Vincent smoked tobacco... "Did I you already tell that I have taken up smoking a pipe again? I have found in it an old faithful friend, I believe that we never more will separate. Uncle Vincent told me that you smoke too." (Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, Paris, 10 Dec. 1875). (http://www.tfsimon.com/auvers-sur-oise.html) This undated painting...at the Van Gogh Museum in Antwerp, renders a macabre vision of a smoking skeleton in a muted, monochromatic palette. It remains somewhat ambiguous whether the artist van Gogh was making a serious commentary on the brevity of life, or a sardonic jab at the seriousness of morbid art. The museum website explains: “It was probably executed in the winter of 1885–86, during Van Gogh’s stay in Antwerp. This skull with a cigarette was likely meant as a kind of joke, and probably also as a comment on conservative academic [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/19/death-in-art-_n_6849376.html]