Egon Schiele died on 31 October 1918 in Vienna, at 28, of the Spanish flu. His wife, Edith, six months pregnant, had died of the same illness three days earlier.
He caught the flu only days before and died in his parents-in-law's apartment at Hietzinger Hauptstraße 114.
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It was not the first deathbed he drew that year.
Gustav Klimt, his mentor, died in Vienna on 6 February 1918, at 55. He had suffered a stroke in January, and influenza finished him. The next day Schiele went to the morgue of the General Hospital and drew the dead face three times. On one sheet he wrote, in capitals, EGON SCHIELE 7.II 1918. To the left of the profile he added the name GUSTAV KLIMT, so that no one would mistake the sitter.
Less than nine months later, the same epidemic reached his own family. It took Edith first, and the child she was carrying. Then it took him.
What You'll Discover
Why 1918 was his best year.
What happened in that apartment.
The photograph taken after he died.
What he asked for at the end.
The painting he left unfinished.