Deep in the archives of The Metropolitan Museum of Art are two strange old scrapbooks packed with newspaper obituaries of painters, illustrators, sculptors, and photographers, famous and forgotten alike. Somber death notices of luminaries like Claude Monet and Auguste Rodin are preserved on their crumbling pages, side by side with tragic, often grisly stories of obscure artists. Compiled from 1906 to 1929, the scrapbooks not only memorialize the subjects of the obits; they also exhibit the sensationalized reporting typical of the heyday of yellow journalism.

Who collected these nearly three thousand obituaries of artists? Some had celebrated careers, some became celebrated only posthumously, and some met their demise poverty-stricken, victims of accident,  murder, or disease. In Deaths of Artists Moske unravels the improbable story of how an ex-convict and aspiring artist hired in 1894 as a Met Museum guard—Arthur D’Hervilly—came to assemble this massive chronicle. Moske’s engaging narrative is illustrated with full-page images of scrapbook pages, headlines, and paintings and sculptures by the artist-subjects. The deaths of artists, seen in the light of their uncommon lives, add up to much more than a litany of sad ends. In this eerie glimpse into a dark side of art history and creative practice, Moske illuminates the unique challenges artists face, exceptional risks they take, and the cruel turns of fate that often thwart their efforts.