Oliver Cromwell

This portraitback to top

The best of the NPG masks. The wart on his forehead appears to be ‘stuck on’. The earliest known cast of a Cromwell mask is that in the Ashmolean Museum, to which NPG 4025 relates closely, but the nose is slightly deflected to the right; there are several other casts, [1] and see below.
D. Piper, ‘The contemporary Portraits of Oliver Cromwell’, Wal. Soc., XXIV, 1958, p 37, as at least a replica of Cromwell’s standing-in-state effigy.

Footnotesback to top

1) K. Pearson & G. K. Morant, ‘Portraiture of Oliver Cromwell’, Biometrica, XXVI, 1935, pp 93-97, pls.lxix-lxxvi.

Referenceback to top

Pearson and Morant 1935
K. Pearson & G. K. Morant, ‘Portraiture of Oliver Cromwell’, Biometrica, XXVI, 1935, p 95.

Piper 1958
D. Piper, ‘The contemporary Portraits of Oliver Cromwell’, Wal. Soc., XXIV, 1958, p 37, under no.12.

Piper 1963
D. Piper, Catalogue of the Seventeenth Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery 1625-1714, 1963, pp 94-95.

Physical descriptionback to top

Plaster with a bronze glaze, on a circular socle. A prominent wart above his right eye.

Provenanceback to top

Presented in 1957 by the Frankland family,¹ direct descendants of Cromwell’s granddaughter, Elizabeth Russell.

¹ By 1957 it had descended to Eric S. Grant from Maj. Frankland’s widow (Grant’s mother-in-law).

Exhibitionsback to top

Spink & Sons, Ltd, London, 1928.<sup>1

1</sup> Illustrated London News, 7 July 1928, p 9.


This extended catalogue entry is by John Ingamells, one of a limited number of entries drafted in 2010 for the incomplete catalogue, Early Stuart Portraits 1625-1685, and is as written then. For the most up-to-date details on individual Collection works, we recommend reading the information provided in the Search the Collection results on this website in parallel with this text.

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