
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.
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.

Portrait of a deceased boy
A recent addition to the collection is this painting by top artist Otto van Veen (1556-1629). It is a very beautifully painted death portrait of an unknown little boy. The work dates from 1584 and is the earliest known post-mortem portrait from the Low Countries. Otto van Veen was born in Leiden, but grew up in European court circles. In 1587, he became court painter to governor Alessandro Farnese, indicating his enormous status. Van Veen was tutor to Peter Paul Rubens.
The portrait had never before been seen in a public collection and until recently was known only from a black-and-white photograph. A private collector is lending the work to Tot Zover for at least five years.
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.

Death portrait of Aat Veldhoen
For Aat Veldhoen (1934-2018), home and studio were the same thing. 'You are always an artist, all day.' His colorful home was filled with his paintings, drawings, sculptures, easels and brushes. Veldhoen also liked to paint light switches.
Daughter Venus is a photographer and made this portrait of her father shortly after his death. The coffin stood in the middle of the living room, among his artwork and painting attributes. Just as colorful are the bouquets surrounding him.
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?