Still Life Art | Mildred's Last Cigarette | Betsy Crum

The last cigarette my grandmother ever smoked, photographed straight on against nothing at all.

Crum Art

Mildred's Last Cigarette — still life art print by Betsy Crum in a horizontal carved wood frame

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Mildred's Last Cigarette still life photograph by Betsy Crum in a gold frame — Camel unfiltered, Texas nostalgia art Mildred's Last Cigarette — still life art print by Betsy Crum in a horizontal carved wood frame Mildred's Last Cigarette photograph by Betsy Crum framed in a lived-in room Mildred's Last Cigarette photograph by Betsy Crum, matted fine art print High Quality Paper Art Print Tube
$50.00
Sizes & Prices

Print Size Guide

Horizontal Prints

7 FT SOFA (REFERENCE) 8×10" 11×14" 16×20" 18×24" 24×36"

All prints ship unframed. Rectangular and square prints fit standard frame sizes.

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Still Life Cigarette Art by Betsy Crum

This is one of the last cigarettes my grandmother, Mildred Steed, ever smoked — great-grandmother to my girls, Caya and Tavi. After she passed, my mother plucked it out of the ashtray and kept it, and somehow that Camel unfiltered has survived a quarter-century without falling apart. Mildred was a Texas lady, born a stone's throw from the El Camino Real. If you ever knew a Camel-unfiltered smoker you know the whole ritual — the loose tobacco, the pinch, the spit-it-out. Every day she said she was going to quit. She never did.

I shot it the way Richard Avedon shot a portrait: stark, straight on, against nothing. To me it was never a still life. It was a portrait of her. I kept expecting the real thing to crumble to dust any day, and it still has not. As cigarette art it is unsentimental on the surface and not underneath, which is the only honest way to do it. It sits alongside Caya's Cigarettes & Coffee and Cigarette Study.

Betsy Crum, working in Texas. Original family artwork, printed to order.

Fine Art Prints Made in Fort Worth, Texas

Since 1996, Crum Art has created original art, paintings, and fine art prints in Fort Worth, showing and selling work at hundreds of art shows across Texas.

Print Details

  • Museum-grade giclee: archival pigment inks on 100% cotton rag paper
  • Unframed and sized to fit standard frames
  • Studio-made, artist-signed prints only available directly from Crum Art

Made in Texas.

Made with love. Signed by hand. Shipped with care. Hung with joy.

Product FAQ

Is this a real cigarette?

Yes. One of the last Mildred Steed smoked, kept by the family for more than twenty-five years and photographed as it is.

Is it a photograph or a painting?

A photograph, taken by Betsy in the stark straight-on style Avedon used for portraits — subject against a plain ground, nothing else in the frame.

Is it morbid?

It has not read that way to anybody who has one. It is a keepsake of a specific woman, and people who knew a smoker like her tend to recognize it immediately.

Who is it for?

People who knew a Camel-unfiltered smoker and the whole ritual that came with one. It reads as a portrait rather than still life art, and the ones who recognize her in it are the ones who take it home.

Will this look like an original painting or a print?

Crum Art takes the scanning and photographing of original paintings seriously — we work to capture the texture of the canvas or paper the original was created on, so that texture shows through in the print. Combined with the cotton rag paper’s own subtle surface and the hand-signing, many customers say they cannot tell if it’s an original or a print. That’s intentional. These are not flat digital reproductions — they are fine art prints that carry the soul of the original.

What sizes does this print come in?

Our fine art prints are available in standard rectangle and square sizes. Rectangles: 8x10 unframed matted to 11x14, 11x14 unframed, 16x20, 18x24, and 24x36. Squares: 8x8 unframed matted to 12x12, 12x12 unframed, 16x16, 20x20, and 24x24. Each size ships ready to frame, making it easy to find the right fit for your wall.

How do I make a gallery wall with art prints?

Start with an anchor piece and build outward — many Crum Art prints are part of series designed to group together as a statement gallery wall, or hang individually as standalone pieces. Since every image is sized to fit standard frames, mixing sizes is easy: lay the arrangement out on the floor first, keep about two to three inches between frames, and center the whole grouping at eye level.