Affiches Skeletons Warming Themselves

"Skeletons Warming Themselves" is among James Ensor'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.