The small and undated oil-on-canvas painting featuring a skeleton and cigarette is part of the permanent collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

[1] It was most likely painted in the winter of 1885–86 as a satirical comment on conservative academic practices.

Van Gogh was in Antwerp, Belgium at that time attending classes at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, which he later said were boring and taught him nothing.

It is considered a vanitas or memento mori, at a time when van Gogh himself was in poor health.

It may be influenced by works of Hercules Segers, a 17th-century Dutch artist, or of Félicien Rops, a Belgian contemporary of van Gogh.