German artist and printmaker Carlos Schwabe was born on July 21, 1866, in Altona. He moved to Paris after he has finished his study in Geneva. In Paris, he became familiar with some Symbolist artists. He became well-known and he was much in the requisition. He illustrated many famous novels of that time. His paintings usually reveal mythological themes. Symbolists, with who he became acquainted, affected him a lot. His paintings were rather experimental and specific. They were reflecting a symbolistic idealism. But after 1900, scenes in his works became more conspicuous and extensional. The most important feature of his paintings was images of women. They often were revealing scenes of suffering, tragedy, and death. The other paintings with women, in contrast, were representing creativity, exhortation and guidance. “The death of a close friend in 1894, when Schwabe was 28 years old, engendered his interest in representing death” (“Carlos Schwabe” n.p.). Many of the images of angels and virgins Carlos drew from his wife. He also drew the image of “Death” in his masterpiece painting The Death of the Grave-Digger from her. The painting displays a graveyard covered with snow. The woman angel is dressed in black and has dark blue wings. She landed like a mystic crow on the brink of the grave. There is an old man inside the grave, he is a grave-digger. The woman angel holds a green light in her hand. There is a reflection of this light on her chest. This light most likely represents old man’s soul. The angel’s face is cold, bleak and sorrowful. She is carrying the mask of indifference and rigor, with which she passes judgment. Despite the obvious absence of death attributes, such as black overall with deep hood and scythe, the image of death is brightly represented in the picture. As it should be among the Symbolists, signs are hidden: the angel is wearing a long black dress and black hoop, the shape of her dark wings reminds the death’s scythe. The old man is watching right into the angel’s eyes and he is about to drop his shovel and fall to the grave, which he was digging for someone else. His right arm is almost squeezing his heart, stretching to hold the leaking life. But it is too late, his soul belongs to him no more. Obviously, the death came suddenly. He looks shocked and fascinated by her grandeur and beauty at the same time. The woman angel is pointing in the sky, which means that the old man is going to heaven. But with her eyes, she is looking down to the grave. The symbolic metaphorical manner is used to show the main subject in Schwabe’s latest works, the subject of death (Neginsky n.p.). The techniques that are used in the painting are watercolor, pencil and gouache. Using the gouache Schwabe makes a bright contrast of the black angel and white cemetery covered with snow. One of the most valuable properties of gouache – a good covering ability, so that the dark areas can be painted over with light colors and vice versa (“Painting with Gouache” n.p.). A thick layer of gouache looks like an oil painting. It has a reach and saturated color, which fits perfectly to express sadness, grief, doom and death, as well as snow and headstones. It is useful to create a good contrast, which we can see in this pa