It shows the Moira or Parca Atropos leading the Angel of Death's black horse.

[4] A true meditation on death, produced just at the time Moreau retired from painting, its daring use of colour made it a precursor of fauvism fifteen years later, particularly the work of Georges Rouault, his pupil and the first curator of the musée Gustave-Moreau.

[2] His "best and only friend Alexandrine Dureux had died and he painted the work in his memory at the same time as Orpheus Weeping Upon Eurydice's Tomb[1][5] In Heures, Francis Poictevin wrote of the work: At the summit of a moor at the foot of which rises a cadaverous moon, a moon of an evil hour, a horse mounted by the angel of death, some skinned obscure figure, seemingly skinless, a bloody candle in his hand, this shadowy horse, the fevered eye, the head turning quivering and begging strangely towards its guide, a suspicious looking old woman buried in her mantle, as he advances slightly magically with his quickset bridle, above all sniffing the abyss all around himThe work evokes the idea of grief.

[2] Atropos, the most terrible of the three Parcae, was the one who cut the thread of life,[1] while the Angel of Death could well be one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

[7] His treatment is almost expressionist, especially in its use of black, the quick and scraped application of paint and the reddening tones.