Although Constance Mayer killed herself while working on Une Famille Dans La Desolation (“A Miserable Family“) it isn’t unfinished. It was completed by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, Mayer’s partner in one of the most famous doomed affairs in art history. Meeting in 1803, when Prud’hon was one of the most famous painters in France and Mayer was a rising young artist, they soon became close collaborators, to the point where it’s said to be difficult to tell where her work ends and his begins. Since Prud’hon preferred drawing to painting, he would often sketch the design for a painting and Mayer would finish it in oils. Since Prud’hon was better-known (and a man) these were often sold as his work alone, with owners even replacing her name with his to get a better price. Still, Mayer was successful in her own right and maintained a studio in the Sorbonne. It would have been a perfect match, but Prud’hon already had a miserable family of his own. He and his wife actually had 6 children, although the marriage was so unhappy that she had a breakdown and eventually died in a mental hospital. In one version of the story, Prud’hon’s promised his wife on her deathbed that he would never remarry, devastating Constance. Others suggest that the government requisitioning her Sorbonne studio pushed her over the edge. Either way, on May 26, 1821, Mayer cut her own throat with Prud’hon’s shaving razor. Devastated, Prud’hon would pass away two years later, but not before completing their final collaboration, a portrait of a grieving family. (http://listverse.com/2015/07/18/10-final-paintings-by-artists-who-committed-suicide/)