The Garden of Death

Painting_150px|

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dim = 300px
title=The Garden of Death
artist=Hugo Simberg
year=1896
type=Watercolor and gouache
height=16
width=17
city=Helsinki
museum=Ateneum

"The Garden of Death" ( _fi. 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". [fi icon [http://www.yle.fi/teema/sininenlaulu/artikkeli.php?id=34 Hugo Simberg] at YLE.fi] [ [http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=12706 The Garden of Death] at New York University's Art, Literature and Medicine Database]

The Garden of Death was one of the favourite subjects of Simberg's and he made several versions of it using different techniques. [fi icon [http://www.tampere.fi/sanoinjakuvin/rakennukset/tuomiokirkko/koristelu_simberg.html Koristelu - Hugo Simberg] at Tampere.fi] 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.

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