FRIDA KAHLO / SUICIDE

Wilbur & Dorothy Hahn Hale

(...) Dorothy Hale who, after the death of her husband and a subsequent string of failed romances, committed suicide by leaping from the window of her New York City apartment.
Clare Booth Luce, the famous writer and socialite who was also a close friend of Dorothy Hale, subsequently met Kahlo and commissioned her to paint a portrait of Hale. Luce was doubtless expecting some kind a conventional over-the-fireplace portrait, but the ever-morbid Kahlo's The Suicide of Dorothy Hale is a lurid and bloody scene showing Hale falling to her death, and also lying dead on the pavement below.
Luce, beside herself with astonishment and rage, was restrained from having the death portrait destroyed but did have the most offending portions painted over. (...)

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/ Rejected Portraits