In 1926, Rouault created a series of etchings to illustrate the poems of Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal for Ambroise Vollard.  The images and text were not published for forty years, after the deaths of the artist and publisher.

Skeleton accompanied Baudelaire's poem Squellete laboureur, inspired by a woodcut in an old book of anatomy showing a skeleton in the act of working, which caused the poet to ponder whether eternal life was a lie.