The French post-impressionist Pierre Bonnard was a big inspiration for Ragnar Sandberg from the mid 1930s and onwards. Sandberg refined his colourite and created paintings with a sensual and poetic feel to them. At the end of the 1930s Sandberg added darker colours, contrasting with bright pink, red, yellow and blue. The motifs were mostly drawn from Gothenburg, depicting playful scenes with people bathing, cycling or, like here, students closely gathered around their fascinating object of study; a skeleton.