The Garden of Death
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
| The Garden of Death |
| Hugo Simberg, 1896 |
| Watercolor and gouache, 16 × 17 cm |
| Helsinki, Ateneum |
The Garden of Death (Finnish: Kuoleman puutarha) (1896) is a painting by Finnish symbolist painter Hugo Simberg. Like many of Simberg's paintings, it depicts a gloomy, otherworldly scene. The central figures are reminiscent of the classic black-clad Grim Reaper, but their poses tell a very different story. Death is tending to his garden with all the care and love of a skilled gardener. The Garden of Death is one of the few paintings whose symbolism Simberg explained himself, he preferred to let viewers make up their own minds. In a note on one sketch he called the eponymous garden as "the place where the dead end up before going to Heaven".[1][2]
The Garden of Death was one of the favourite subjects of Simberg's and he made several versions of it using different techniques.[3] Among the most famous of those is the larger version of the painting that exists in the Tampere Cathedral, which Simberg painted frescoes for in 1905 and 1906.
[edit] References
- ^ (Finnish) Hugo Simberg at YLE.fi
- ^ The Garden of Death at New York University's Art, Literature and Medicine Database
- ^ (Finnish) Koristelu - Hugo Simberg at Tampere.fi
 |
This painting-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
