Life, Death and Memory
Life, Death and Memory
Past display archive
17 April 2017 - 4 February 2018
Room 16, Floor 2
Free
John Evelyn
by Robert Walker
1648-circa 1656
NPG 6179
Portraiture has an inextricable relationship with the passing of time and mortality. Portraits usually reflect a particular moment in a person’s life. That person will inevitably change, get older and eventually die but the portrait endures. This display draws together historic and contemporary works from the Collection that engage with this complex, sometimes troubling, relationship. There is a long tradition of portraits that explicitly anticipate death, including the seventeenth-century diarist John Evelyn shown clutching a skull. Artists have frequently explored their mortality in self-portraits. A recent example is Tracey Emin’s Death Mask, a bronze cast of the artist’s head. This newly-acquired sculpture blurs the distinctions between life and death, art and identity.
Related portraits
- Sir Thomas Chaloner (NPG 2445)
- Venetia, Lady Digby (NPG 5727)
- Unknown man, formerly known as James Scott, Duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch (NPG 1566)
- John Evelyn (NPG 6179)
- John Tradescant the Younger (NPG 1089)
- John Constable (NPG 4063)
- Derek Jarman ('Seer') (NPG 6322)
- Sarah Lucas ('Self-Portrait with Skull') (NPG P884(8))
- Sam Taylor-Johnson (Sam Taylor-Wood) ('Self-portrait in Single-breasted Suit with Hare') (NPG P959)
- Tracey Emin ('Death Mask') (NPG 7034)
- Ian Breakwell ('Parasite and Host') (NPG P1291)
- Philip Gould, Baron Gould of Brookwood (NPG P1697)