To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it
means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to
give it its final blow... the coup de grace for the painter
as well as for the picture.
-- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
-- Quoted in Jaime Sabartes, Picasso: portraits et souvenirs, ch. 7 (1946)