Man and Skeleton

Ray Weight (loc. cit.) records Carel Weight's recollections of painting this self-employed artist's model: 'He walked in, and stood just as you see him - exactly in the right place. If I'd posed him all morning I couldn't have got it so absolutely right. He was a good model, but was so neglectful of personal care that in summer his feet were aromatic and he could only be employed on a seasonal basis ... This [picture] was the first of many paintings I did of him. As for the skeleton - it was always being maltreated by the students, so I kept it in my room. It's a play between the man and the skeleton. It stands close to him, and there are certain points of departure between them. The door stands open, as the ultimate portal through which the old man will pass in abdication to his interior doppelgnger - 'The steadfast and enduring bone'. Yet it's an anatomical specimen, and no more than that. It's knock-knees and feet could shuffle and slip on the stand and the structure sag and collapse. Something comic could be suggested in its good-humoured grin - as near as it gets to the grisly enjoyment of its compeers in Holbein, Bosch and Bruegel'.