First published in French by Editions du Sueill, Paris, under the title: Le dernier tableau

Preamble -- Death on the horizon (Hopper, Marquet, Van der Weyden, Friedrich, Courbet, Mitchell, Riopelle, Bosch, Claude, Rothko, Chassériau, Van Gogh) -- Eros and Thanatos (Rousseau, Klimt, Renoir, Goya, Ingress, Gauguin, Poussin, Rubens, David, Hogarth, Caravaggio, Klein) -- Finish with a fanfare (Ensor, Mantegna, Vermeer, Dalí, Signorelli, Corot, Repin, Piero della Francesa, Staël, Velázquez) -- A glorious coda (Twombly, Pisanello, Matisse, Caillebotte, Uccello, Poliakoff, Redon, Bonheur, Bonnard, Zao) -- Facing death (Bacon, Cranach the Elder, Picasso, Chardin, Titian, Malevich, Buffet, Klee, Eakins, Braque, Hals) -- Childhood in art (Rembrandt, Dix, Lotto, Morisot, Van Dyck, Fragonard, Schiele, Zurbarán, Veronese, Da Vinci, Soutine, Seurat) -- Business as usual (Degas, Pollock, Hammershøi, Monet, Cézanne, Mondrian, Gainsborough, Constable, Sisley, Whistler, Warhol, Motherwell) -- The consolation of eternity (Martini, Rublev, Mušič, Kahlo, Giotto, Tintoretto, Turner, Michelangelo, Memling, Vieira da Silva) -- A final bouquet (Toulouse-Lautrec, Manet, Gros, Delacroix, Wood, Fautrier, Munch, Géricault, Modigliani, Basquiat, Watteau)

There are no rules, and even less justice. Death takes everyone without discrimination. Sometimes it is accidental - like Signorelli, who fell from scaffolding. Sometimes it is expected, as with the diabetic Cezanne, who wrote "I am old, sick, and I swore to die while painting". But often, researching a painter's death is an easier task than determining which of their works is truly their 'last'. Paintings tend to be dated by year and not month, inciting much debate among art historians. This book embraces this ambiguity, studying 100 examples of works that lay completed for several years, or were left unfinished on the easel, or were finished post-mortem by a friend's grieving hand. 'The Last Painting' collects 100 terminal paintings from 100 artists, including Dali, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Goya, Pollock, Rembrandt, Dix, Bonnard, Titien, and many more. Each picture gives us a glimpse into the painter's mind. Did they know death was coming? Did they paint with denial, or acceptance? Did they return to a favourite subject, or decide to embark on a new, original project while they still had time? A poetic and thought-provoking book, 'The Last Painting' is a sensitive exploration of the relationship between art and death

Translated from the French