Postcard US-1785079

Skeletons Warming Themselves, by James Ensor. This painting 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. X-radiographs reveal another finished picture beneath this scene. It is a bust-length portrait of a young girl, probably painted before 1883. Ensor’s reuse of an earlier canvas may reflect his own difficult economic condition in 1889.