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The final work of an artist can be a startling window into their final moments. Beautiful, laced with sadness, or embracing death, we take a look at the famous last works of 10 renowned artists.

1. Georgia O'Keeffe – The Beyond, 1972.

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) The Beyond, 1972, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 in

Often heralded as the "Mother of American modernism", Georgia O'Keeffe is well known for her colorful oil paintings, depicting ultra-close-up flowers, New York skyscrapers, and the barren landscapes of New Mexico. Towards the end of her life her eyesight deteriorated due to macular degeneration, leaving her with only peripheral vision. This was a devastating blow to the highly visual artist, who was forced to stop oil painting in 1972, although she did continue painting with the help of assistants thereafter. Nonetheless, her last unassisted work in oil, The Beyond, 1972, is a towering work that looks death squarely in the face. O’Keeffe seems to contemplate the magnitude of existence and the impossible notion of what comes next.

2. Claude Monet – Les Grandes Décorations, 1926.

Claude Monet (1840-1926), Lake of Water Lillies (Bassin aux nympheas), 1917-1920, 2 x 0.9m

Les Grandes Décorations, 1920-26, are among Monet’s most famous works – enormous curved murals that depict the famous water lilies that lined his beloved pond. Monet conceived of the idea when he was 70 and it took him ten years to complete the works. The artist painted Les Grandes Décorations when both his eyesight and health were failing. He had to build a new studio to accommodate the huge, 91 x 2 meter canvases, and in the process almost went blind from cataracts. As his eyesight declined, his works turned from vivid, bright colors to blurred mixtures of browns and reds. Monet wrote letters to friends, describing how colors were getting dull and indistinguishable – he even had to label tubes of paint. By the time the paintings were finally finished, Monet was on his deathbed. Generously, he donated the fruits of his last ten years to the French State, and the works were hung in l’Orangerie Museum in Paris.

3. Keith Haring – Unfinished Painting, 1989.

Keith Haring (1958-1990), Unfinished Painting, 1989, Acrylic on canvas, 39 x 39 in

Keith Haring skyrocketed onto the New York arts scene during the 1980s and became well known for his distinctive visual language, which he used to explore social and political themes. The artist and activist, who hung out with the likes of Andy Warhol, Madonna, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, began painting sublime and colorful works that confronted negative perceptions of homosexuality and AIDS. Unfinished Painting is a haunting final work, completed shortly before Haring died from AIDS-related complications in 1990. The painting serves as a touching statement about a life cut short at the tender age of thirty-one, by an illness that the state was doing little to treat or prevent.

4. Jean-Michel Basquiat – Riding With Death, 1988.

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), Riding With Death, 1988, acrylic and crayon on canvas, 249 x 289.5 cm

A contemporary of Haring’s, Basquiat was another electric young voice in the '80s New York scene. Having started out as a graffiti artist in the Lower East Side in the 1970s, by the '80s Basquiat was exhibiting neo-expressionist paintings in galleries and museums internationally. Whether or not Riding With Death, 1988, is in fact Basquiat’s final painting is still a point of some debate. In any case, the work certainly has a distinctly morbid quality that evokes the sense of an ending. Indeed, Basquiat painted it just months before his own death from a heroin overdose in 1988. The skeleton has brown and black oil dripping from its mouth, as if it has taken a bite out of the figure who rides it, and is continuing to chew away. This could be interpreted as Basquiat reflecting the dangers his lifestyle was inflicting on him. The art critic Michael Dragovic suggests the work represents a moment of clarity for Basquiat, noting, “The painting is deeply personal, and I believe it to be a confession or realization of Basquiat’s habits, because of its refined and calculated nature, and because his death followed so quickly after its completion.”

5. Frida Kahlo – Viva La Vida, Watermelons, 1954.

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), Viva La Vida, Watermelons, 1954, oil on maisonite, 59.5 x 50.8 cm

The beloved Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is well known for her magical realist self-portraits, and her vivid and uncompromising depictions of female experience. Viva La Vida, 1954, is the artist’s last work, completed just eight days before she died aged 47 in 1954. The official cause of death was declared pulmonary embolism, but many believe her death to be a suicide. Having spent months bedridden after her leg was amputated at the knee, Kahlo was dealing with chronic pain, and had tried to take her life before. On the night she died, she gave her husband – the artist Diego Rivera – a wedding anniversary gift, over a month in advance. The painting is a still life with watermelons, a fruit that in Mexico is laden with cultural symbolism as a popular icon in the Dia de los Muertos – the festival of the Day of the Dead. Kahlo’s inscription on the melons, viva la vida, is a haunting phrase, meaning "long live life" in Spanish.

6. Diego Rivera – The Watermelons, 1957.

Diego Rivera (1886-1957), The Watermelons, 1957, Oil on canvas

Kahlo’s husband, Diego Rivera, was another prominent Mexican painter and cultural critic. His large frescoes helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement, and his volatile relationship with Frida was the inspiration for many of her paintings. Some years her senior, Rivera died of natural causes at the age of 70, just three years after his wife’s untimely death. His last work was an oil on canvas painting, which, in a strange echo of his lover’s chosen image, also depicts watermelons. The painting was supposedly produced after Dolores Olmedo, one of his greatest supporters and patrons, commissioned him to paint it for her. Initially Rivera refused, saying that he "did not like to paint watermelons." Only when Olmedo threatened to commission another prominent artist did the ever-proud Rivera agree. The Watermelons, 1957, was the last painting he ever completed and signed.

7. Francis Bacon – Study Of A Bull, 1991.

Francis Bacon (1909-1992) Study Of A Bull, 1991, oil on canvas

The genre-defining figurative painter, Francis Bacon, died of a heart attack in 1992. It was a result of chronic asthma which had plagued him all his life. Study of a Bull, 1991, was completed just months before the artist died, but has never been seen publicly. Having spent the entirety of its existence in a very private London collection, the painting has never been exhibited, or even seen, save by a handful of people. In fact, it was only discovered some years after the artist’s death, when the art historian Martin Harrison was researching Bacon's work for the publication of the Francis Bacon catalogue raisonné. Harrison suggests that Bacon knew that he was close to death when he was completing this striking work, and the painting represents the artist grappling with mortality. According to Harrison, “Bacon is ready to sign off … he was so ill… He knew exactly what he was doing here”.

8. Édouard Manet – A Bar At The Folies-Bergère, 1882.

Édouard Manet (1832-1883) A Bar At The Folies-Bergère, 1882, Oil on canvas, 96 x 130 cm

The notorious French painter Édouard Manet was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, becoming a central figure in the transition from realism to impressionism. His last painting is in fact one of his most famous and beloved, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, which was completed in 1882, a year before he died after having his foot amputated due to gangrene. The painting shows Manet’s commitment to realism, but has caused much debate among critics, due to its confusing use of perspective, as the woman’s reflection in the mirror does not follow an exact reality. It’s slightly off tilt. According to Tate Modern, “In Manet’s painting, a barmaid gazes out of frame, observed by a shadowy male figure. The whole scene appears to be reflected in the mirror behind the bar, creating a complex web of viewpoints.” The work originally belonged to Manet's neighbor, the composer Emmanuel Chabrier, who hung it over his piano.

9. Mark Rothko – Untitled, 1970.

Mark Rothko (1903-1970) Untitled, 1970, oil on canvas.

One of the masters of American abstract expressionism (although he declined this categorization), Mark Rothko is known for his colorful and bold multiform paintings. In early 1968, Rothko was diagnosed with a mild aortic aneurysm, but ignored the doctor's orders and continued to drink and smoke heavily, avoid exercise, and maintain an unhealthy diet. According to his friend Dore Ashton, he became "highly nervous, thin, restless." He began to turn his attention to smaller, less physically strenuous works, including acrylics on paper, and produced a number of decidedly gloomy works in darker, faded colors. Meanwhile, Rothko's marriage had become increasingly troubled, and he separated from his wife Mell in 1969, before moving into his studio. On February 25, 1970, Rothko's assistant found the artist lying dead on the floor in front of the sink, covered in blood. He had cut an artery in his right arm with a razor blade. His final piece, perhaps prophetically, was bright red.

10. Henri Matisse – La Gerbe, 1953.

Henri Matisse (1869-1954), La Gerbe, 1953, paper and gouache cut-out, 294 x 350 cm.

Henri Matisse was an enormously influential artist who helped define and shape the European visual culture of the early 20th century. Best known as a painter, his expressive use of color and brush strokes became indicative of the Fauvist style. However, in 1941 Matisse was diagnosed with abdominal cancer and underwent surgery that left him unable to walk. Painting and sculpture became physically impossible, so he embraced a new type of medium – cut-outs. With the help of his assistants he began creating cut paper collages, pre-painted with gouache and arranged to compose colorful and lively forms. His last work, Le Gerbe, 1953, meaning The Sheaf, was a piece made from ceramic tile embedded in plaster, completed a year before his death. Even in his final years, he continued to innovate, and redefine a movement.

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