He painted a memorial portrait of her corpse lying on a pillow, prepared for burial.
What interests me most about the portrait is that it clearly is of a corpse. There is no effort to depict Margaret as "just sleeping," as in a contemporary open-casket funeral. Her arms are bound in place; her jaw is tied up to prevent her mouth from dropping open. Her skin color is sallow and decomposing. She doesn't look like she might open her eyes at any second. She looks like she'll be buried soon. (As a result, I find it less disturbing than the artificial sleep of contemporary open-casket funerals, but I get how it would be upsetting to other people, especially people at the time who had seen their own children in similar states.)
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What interests me most about the portrait is that it clearly is of a corpse. There is no effort to depict Margaret as "just sleeping," as in a contemporary open-casket funeral. Her arms are bound in place; her jaw is tied up to prevent her mouth from dropping open. Her skin color is sallow and decomposing. She doesn't look like she might open her eyes at any second. She looks like she'll be buried soon. (As a result, I find it less disturbing than the artificial sleep of contemporary open-casket funerals, but I get how it would be upsetting to other people, especially people at the time who had seen their own children in similar states.)