Post-mortem #15

Charles Willson Peale "Rachel Weeping"  c.1775

This was a very private picture kept in the corner of Peale's studio behind a drape. It depicts his wife Rachel mourning their dead daughter. He kept a sign with the painting that read, "Before you draw this curtain Consider whether you will afflict a Mother or Father who has lost a Child."

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Ants Death Circle

Ant Death Circles Explained

Post-mortem #11

This crime scene photo from the 30's or 40's was shot from the ceiling looking down. At the time this view was required in many jurisdictions. If you look carefully you can see the legs of the tripod that was used by the photographer to "float" over the victims without disturbing anything.

Post-mortem #10

Science is Beautiful #14

Is Death Liberating?

Post-mortem #7

Egon Schiele's Death Bed 1918

Post-mortem #6

Gerhard Richter

This picture, painted in 1965, represents the young Gerhard Richter sitting on the lap of his Aunt Marianne, age 14. Just 13 years later, in 1945, she would be starved to death in a  German psychiatric hospital having been previously sterilized. It was only recently that Richter learned the fate of his Aunt and that his "late father-in-law, Heinrich Eufinger, was the SS doctor responsible for carrying out the sterilisation of the mentally ill and for implementing the euthanasia programme. The artist, without realising it, had married into a family deeply implicated in the killing of his beloved aunt." More here.

This painting, Family at the Seaside, depicts his Father-in-law, produced long before he knew the past of SS Dr. Eufinger.

Post-mortem #5

Benito Mussolini (2nd from left) and his lover Clara Petacci (3rd from left) photographed in Milan on April 29th, 1945.

Post-mortem #4

Paul Cadmus, Herrin Massacre, 1940

Post-mortem #3

On October 5, 1818, Nancy Hanks Lincoln died of "milk sickness" a disease contracted from drinking the milk of a cow that has eaten the poisonous white snakeroot. Mrs. Lincoln was thirty-four years old when she died, and her son Abraham was nine.

Post-mortem #2

Manet

Manet "Boy and Dog" etching 1862

This boy, Alexandre, worked for Manet as a studio Assistant between 1858 and 1859; in 1859 he hung himself in Manet's studio.

Manet "The Suicide"

Manet  "Execution of Maximilian"

Post-Mortem

Edvard Munch "Inheritance" 1903-05