The Garden of Death

What you are looking at

A walled garden glows in warm ochre and amber light. In it, three figures in long black robes are at work. They are skeletons, Death in the old familiar form, but they are doing the gentlest of jobs. The one on the left bends to water a row of potted plants from a green watering can. The one in the middle cradles a small plant in both bony hands, as if comforting it. The third, at the back, stoops over a raised bed. The flowers they look after are odd, spiky, star-shaped things, some barely more than stalks. A towel hangs on a peg at the far left. The date, 1896, and Simberg's initials are written at lower right.

This is The Garden of Death by Hugo Simberg (1873–1917), one of the leading painters of Finnish Symbolism. It is a small watercolor and gouache, about 16 by 17.5 centimeters, in the Ateneum Art Museum, part of the Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki.

What does it mean?

Simberg left no single explanation, and the picture's appeal lies in its ambiguity. One common reading is that the plants are human souls, and that the garden is a place between life and whatever follows, where Death, far from being a reaper, is a careful, even loving gardener. The small flower held in the middle skeleton's hands suggests tenderness for something fragile. The scene is close to folk tale, and Simberg's skeletons belong to the same family as the gentle, slightly comic devils and angels that fill his other work.

The idea of death as a gardener has older roots. In the medieval Dance of Death, Death takes people from every walk of life; Simberg turns the figure into a caretaker instead of a destroyer.

Looking closely

Notice the details that make the picture strange: the towel on its peg, as if the gardeners wash their hands after work; the neat rows of pots and labels; the low wall and the fringe of trees at the top, closing the garden off from the world. The palette is warm and earthy, which makes the black robes all the more striking.

Legacy

Simberg returned to the composition in 1906 as a large fresco in St John's Church, now Tampere Cathedral, alongside his even more famous The Wounded Angel. In 2006 Finns voted The Wounded Angel their national painting, and The Garden of Death is close behind it in popularity.

Where to see it

The watercolor is in the Ateneum, Helsinki; the fresco version is in Tampere Cathedral. See also Symbolism, Danse Macabre and Memento Mori.