Van Gogh Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette 1886 Long Sleeve Shirt

The same painting, on a long sleeve, which is arguably where it belonged all along — this is a winter picture.

Van Gogh painted it in Antwerp over the winter of 1885 into 1886, while enrolled at the academy and being made to draw skeletons he had no interest in drawing. So he lit one. He was in his early thirties, living on bread and tobacco, and had just had teeth pulled; the painting is a student’s joke, and it has become the most-reproduced memento mori in art because it is funny and because, given what happened nine years later, it is not.

Daddy owns both cuts. The long sleeve is the one he wears from November.

The shirt itself is the good kind of basic: combed ring-spun cotton, preshrunk, side-seamed so it hangs straight, taped shoulders so the collar doesn’t twist after the fortieth wash. It fits like the tee you’ve had for ten years, on day one.

How to wear it

Black long sleeve, black jeans, boots. Sleeves down. This one is not trying to cheer anybody up.