Dans Macabre
The Dans Macabre was a popular theme in Medieval art. Doctors, lawyers, priests, and people of other positions were shown in a dance with a skeleton. These served as reminders that Death doesn't care about social positions or distinctions, and all must die.This painting results from my interest in the Dans Macabre, the Mexican Day of the Dead, and in gun fighters and their last words. In it the doctor and the priest are both present in one scenario, both tending to an ill person. Death has come to claim the victim. In the skeleton’s hand is a Cempasúchil flower, which is of common use in the festivities of the Mexican Day of the Dead.
There are three references here to the deaths of famous gun fighters: the crooked picture on the wall, the “Quin Es” carved in the door, and the cards on the floor.
Jesse James was shot in the back while straightening a picture in his house. In any movie of the subject the picture is a sampler that reads “God Bless This House.” Although this is the popular representation, it is incorrect. I have seen the actual picture that he was straightening at the James Farm and Museum in Kearney, MO, and it is a horizontal piece of needlework that reads “In God We Trust.”
Billy the Kid was shot by Pat Garrett when he answered a knock at the door. His final words, according to Garrett, were “Quin Es?” or “Who is it?"
Wild Bill Hickock was shot from behind while he was playing poker. The hand that he held: two aces, two eights, and a queen, is now known as the Dead Man’s Hand.
Oddly, I had to leave the production of this painting to tend to the death and funeral of my grandmother. I had thrown in the gun fighter references only because of my amusement with the wild west at the time, but it may be worth mention that the father of my grandmother, the one that died during the production of this painting, was a Methodist minister in the midwest, and a neighbor to Jesse James. We believe that there is a chance that he was the minister mentioned in the first chapter of “Jesse James, My Father” by Jesse James, Jr.