Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette

Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette is an early work by Vincent van Gogh. The small and undated oil-on-canvas painting is part of the permanent collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It was probably painted in the winter of 1885–86 as a humorous comment on conservative academic practices - before painting live human models, the academic routine would have included studies of skeletons, to develop an understanding of human anatomy - an assumption based on the fact that Van Gogh was in Antwerp at that time, attending classes at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, classes he would later say were boring and taught him nothing

Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks but received little recognition during his lifetime.

Van Gogh was unsuccessful during his lifetime and was considered a madman and a failure. He became famous after his suicide, and exists in the public imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius, the artist "where discourses on madness and creativity converge". His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century as elements of his painting style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists.

Van gogh attained widespread critical, commercial and popular success over the ensuing decades, and is remembered as an important but tragic painter, whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist.