Elizabeth Heyert | Daphne Jones. Born: August 1954 New York, New York Died: October 2003 Harlem, New York Elizabeth Heyert | Daphne Jones. Born: August 1954 New York, New York Died: October 2003 Harlem, New York

Tot Zover

Travelers | new death portraits in the collection

Death portraits come in all shapes and sizes. Individual portraits, group portraits, paintings, photographs, and so on. Many museums own death portraits but do not display them. Visitors prefer to look at portraits of the living, which is understandable, but also unfortunate. After all, they are portraits full of both sorrow and love.

In this exhibition we show new death portraits in our collection, by Elizabeth Heyert, Otto van Veen and Margriet Luyten, among others.

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Death portraits were painted as early as the sixteenth century. They are documentations of a special moment, a moment of transition and at the same time a final proof that someone has lived. The bond that was there is extended beyond death. A deceased child continues to belong to the family and the portrait shows that. Especially if no other portraits of the child exist yet.

Portraits travel with families until there is no longer a need for them, for example because the deceased is no longer known and has no meaning for new generations. People often still keep the portrait if the creator or the person portrayed is famous.This is less applicable to death portraits. Thus immortalized dead quickly fall into oblivion anyway.

Elizabeth Heyert

Part of this exhibition are death portraits from Elizabeth Heyert's well-known photo series The Travelers. The people portrayed in Elizabeth Heyert's photographs are wearing festive clothing. The party they are going to is in heaven, and if you are going to see Jesus you must look beautiful. After they die, they are dressed this way by Isaiah Owens, funeral director in Harlem, New York. He works according to an old African-American tradition from the southern United States.

Owens lays out the deceased, dresses them beautifully and dyes their hair as needed. Sometimes the dying chose the clothes themselves, more often the next of kin did. In the case of James Earl “Jay Moe” Jones, his friends bought it for him.

Heyert worked on this project for a year, and created 33 portraits. She photographed early in the morning. The night before, Owens had made the deceased beautiful and placed them in the casket on a black cloth. At night, the family came to sit with him or her, and at 10 a.m. the service usually began.

Token of love

Artist Clemens Merkelbach of Enkhuizen (1937-2023) spent two years drawing portraits of his dying friend Gerard Spruyt (1922-2011). The series of 67 drawings forms a poignant record of the dying process and is an ode to love.

The artist visited Gerard every day in the hospital and later the nursing home. Sometimes he is awake, often in deep sleep. Gerard is happy when he sees Clemens drawing at his bedside. It is hushed communication. The series of portraits show a gradual weakening. With each line, Clemens fixed what he was in danger of losing. He turned his emotions into skillful attention and precision.

Insomnia

Margriet Luyten (b. 1952) created the series Insomnia as a counterpoint to all the horrific images of murder and manslaughter we receive daily through the media. The “eternal sleep” has taken hold of these children. Their image radiates tranquility and peace.

Luyten edited some historical and contemporary post-mortem portraits and printed them using cyanotype, a nineteenth-century printing technique. The original photographs have been blown up and stripped of superfluous details. Thus they do not refer to a particular time or place and become universal images of loss and comfort.

Post-mortem photographs circa 1900

Beginning in 1865, photography became accessible to large groups. There was a particular need for portraits. At first this was done mostly in professional photo studios and later in people's homes. Starting around 1920, people also bought their own cameras.

It was mainly deceased children who were photographed. Often people passed by the photo studio first on their way to the funeral. Relatively few Dutch nineteenth-century death portraits are known. Were they simply made less or are we less good at preserving such mementos?