Conference and Seminar Presentations by Emily Knight
A joint paper with Kirsten Smith (DPhil Psychology, University of Oxford)
Stiff, lifeless and immobile, few objects more plainly pronounce the permanency of death than a d... more Stiff, lifeless and immobile, few objects more plainly pronounce the permanency of death than a death mask. The casting process solidifies the features of the deceased as likeness to life starts to fade, leaving an image devoid of animation or expression, often a far cry from the person’s appearance in life. Yet despite this lack of animation, artists have attempted to pull the death mask closer to life or, at least, closer to the moment of death through a variety of sculptural techniques. From carving into the cast to ‘open’ the eyes of the deceased, to painting the surface with more flesh-like tones, artists have attempted to blur the boundary between life and death through strategic artistic intervention.
Focusing primarily on death masks made during the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries in Britain, this paper will examine the various ways in which artists have modified death masks in order to create a more life-like image of the deceased. I will situate these augmented casts within the context of contemporary memorialisation practices, considering the extent to which they were intended to function like artistically rendered portraits, paying particular attention to differing modes of display. Following on from this, I will discuss the possible motivations for adapting a death mask, the very potency of which lies in its seeming authenticity.
On 16th November 1817, Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of the late Princess Charlotte, which he had be... more On 16th November 1817, Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of the late Princess Charlotte, which he had been painting until shortly before her death, passed from the Prince Regent to her husband Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg. On its arrival at Claremont, the home that the newly married couple had shared for little over a year, the diarist Joseph Farington recorded that Leopold ‘saw it and was absorbed in contemplating it’. A month later, the Caledonian Mercury referred to another portrait of the late princess by George Dawe, also painted in the weeks leading up to her death. The author describes how ‘His Serene Highness has since kept it under lock and key, in his own private room, where he constantly sits’.
Leopold’s absorption in these final portraits of his beloved wife demonstrate the power of portraiture as a site of remembrance during the early nineteenth century in Britain. Using the death of Princess Charlotte as a case study, this paper considers the notion that during this period portraits provided visual comfort to the viewer following the death of the sitter. I will suggest that the contemplation of such works was an important element in the grieving process and the lack of such an image could be deeply upsetting, even damaging to those left behind.
When Sir Walter Scott died in 1832, a post-mortem was carried out, his brain removed and analysed... more When Sir Walter Scott died in 1832, a post-mortem was carried out, his brain removed and analysed, the results of which were summarily published a few years later. Shortly afterwards, a cast was made of his face, doing little to hide the open gash across his cranium. The death mask was recast in bronze and displayed at Abbotsford, acting as a somewhat gruesome site of remembrance to this celebrated Scottish figure.
In Scott’s 1871 centenary exhibition in Edinburgh, the death mask was put on display in amongst portraits rendered from life and objects associated with or once owned by Scott. The death mask caused a stir – as the catalogue states, ‘there was perhaps nothing in the whole Exhibition of greater interest than the original Mask’.
This paper will focus on the bronze death mask still on display at Abbotsford and consider how this curious object operated as a kind of secular relic in amongst the mementos from Scotland’s past that Scott had so avidly collected; a temporal bridge from past to present. I will discuss this key moment in Scottish visual culture, before photography emerged as the predominant mode of automatic reproduction, and consider how this process of remembrance created an experience of death that was both haptic and optic, exact and emotional, thereby revealing the fascination with mankind’s inevitable end at the dawn of the Victorian age.
On 6th November 1817, Princess Charlotte Augusta, daughter of the Prince Regent and wife of Princ... more On 6th November 1817, Princess Charlotte Augusta, daughter of the Prince Regent and wife of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg died following an exhausting and protracted labour, which had resulted in a stillborn son. All at once, the ‘nation’s hope’ and future heir to the throne had died, leaving not only her family but the country as a whole, in a unprecedented state of grief. Official mourning ensued, shops and theatres closed, and letters zigzagged across the country, lamenting the death of the most popular royal.
Shortly after her death, there was an outburst of commemoration. Prints, pottery and medals were produced giving everyone the opportunity to participate in this shared grief. Rather than focusing on an individual’s desire to preserve the memory of a loved one, artists had to develop a language in which to express the grief of a nation.
This paper will explore the ways in which artists and craftsmen approach this shared loss, their sources of inspiration and use of particular motifs. While attention will be paid to objects produced in the wake of the Princess’s death, the focus of the paper will be on the profusion of prints. Some of these works incorporated existing portraits of the Princess in addition to particular motifs and/or verses of poetry. Others created apotheosis images accentuating the virtue and goodness for which the Princess was known. Others depicted her on her deathbed with her loving husband collapsed in grief by her side. Each of these types of prints were sanctioned and kept by the Princess’s family and consumed by the public as a whole.
By considering the commissioning of these works and the numbers in which they were produced, I will argue that the public’s grief was twofold. These prints gave people the opportunity to lament the tragedy of the event but they also acted as a way of expressing the nation’s dissatisfaction with the monarchy and the uncertainty of future sovereignty.
During the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries in Britain, there was a marked shift in ... more During the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries in Britain, there was a marked shift in the ways in which people grieved the loss of a loved one, the manner in which this grief was expressed and how the memory of the deceased was manifested in the visual arts. From reserved stoicism to more openly expressed mourning, this period witnessed a change in attitude that corresponded to the wider sentimentality of the age.
Many posthumous portraits were commissioned during this period and in a variety of forms. Some represented the sitter as in life, others in a spiritualised form, and in some instances, after death. By considering specific case studies and with the aid of sermons, poems, diaries and letters, this paper will investigate the reasons for these various types of posthumous portraits and consider the commissioning, display and intended audience of each. In doing so much will be revealed about mourning in the late Georgian period, making reference to the later artistic practices of the Victorian era.
I will argue that posthumous portraits at this time constitute a marked shift in the history of representing death within art and must be considered as a way of coming to terms with death on an emotional level rather than asserting the dynastic importance of the family.
When Sir Thomas Lawrence died in 1730, plaster casts were made of his face and right hand. The de... more When Sir Thomas Lawrence died in 1730, plaster casts were made of his face and right hand. The death mask was placed inside a wooden box with a lid that contained a mezzotint of the artist in life, his paintbrush, chalk and pencils, and a lock of his hair. This curious collection of objects formed a temporal bridge from past to present, operating as a site of remembrance that surpassed mere physical description. The
experience of lifting the lid and the traces of life to reveal the death mask concealed beneath, presented the viewer with the absolute and unalterable finality of death.
But how did this object so lacking in life function as anything more than a weak referent to the absent body? Surely the hard, white materiality of the death mask prevented any real engagement with it, stripping the viewer of any true sense of the deceased in life.
Lawrence’s death mask in this regard exceeds its limitations by marking his existence through trace, touch and abject remains with the addition of actual remnants of his body and the tools of his trade. Does Lawrence’s death mask therefore, mark the point at which commemoration and deified celebration made way for a more encompassing and personal memorial on the brink of the Victorian Age? In this paper, I discussed this key moment in early nineteenth century visual culture, before photography emerged as the predominant mode of automatic reproduction. I considered how this process of remembrance created an experience of death that was both haptic and optic, exact and emotional, thereby revealing the contemporary fascination with mankind’s inevitable end.
Talks by Emily Knight
Here, newly edited from manuscripts held by The Wordsworth Trust, is an entirely new edition of T... more Here, newly edited from manuscripts held by The Wordsworth Trust, is an entirely new edition of The Prelude, the most resonant poem of the entire Romantic Era. Over the last 150 years this poetic autobiography has emerged as one of the most admired works in all of English literature and certainly as the pre-eminent long poem expressing a personal romantic spirit. It tells the story of the growth of imagination and love in the mind of one of the finest poets of the last 250 years.
The editors James Engell and Michael D. Raymond will discuss this book with:
Fiona Stafford (Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford)
Emily Knight (D.Phil candidate in HIstory of Art, University of Oxford)
Professor Steven Matthews (Professor in English Literature (Modernism), University of Reading)
In her portrait by Joshua Reynolds, 3-year-old Penelope Boothby sits calmly with her hands on her... more In her portrait by Joshua Reynolds, 3-year-old Penelope Boothby sits calmly with her hands on her lap, gazing shyly beyond the picture plane. One of the most famous portraits of a child in British art, it epitomises eighteenth-century ideas about childhood. Much to the eternal sadness of her parents, she died just three years later casting this work in a shadowy veil of grief. This talk will consider the ways in which artists captured and alluded to this transient and precarious stage of life during the eighteenth century.
Part of the DEADFriday event at the Ashmolean Museum.
A frozen expression, sunken eyes and tha... more Part of the DEADFriday event at the Ashmolean Museum.
A frozen expression, sunken eyes and that famous mole, the death mask of Oliver Cromwell provides an eerie encounter with the face of a man long deceased. My talk focuses on the practice of taking death masks, how and when they were made, where they were displayed and how they have been considered over time. Using Oliver Cromwell’s death mask as a starting point, I will make reference to other death masks taken from the faces of the ‘famous and infamous’ and discuss phrenology, the practice of interpreting the shape of someone skull as a way of identifying someone extraordinary talents or terrifying malice.
Published works by Emily Knight
Events by Emily Knight
A seminar series organised for RECSO (Romanticism and Eighteenth-Century Studies Oxford) in colla... more A seminar series organised for RECSO (Romanticism and Eighteenth-Century Studies Oxford) in collaboration with the Ashmolean Museum. Speakers from various disciplines within the Humanities discuss their research in relation to prints, drawings and objects from the collection, which illustrate or compliment an aspect of their work. In each of our four fortnightly workshops, participants present a 30-minute seminar paper to an interdisciplinary audience. This is followed by an open discussion of their paper and the works of art discussed.
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Conference and Seminar Presentations by Emily Knight
Focusing primarily on death masks made during the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries in Britain, this paper will examine the various ways in which artists have modified death masks in order to create a more life-like image of the deceased. I will situate these augmented casts within the context of contemporary memorialisation practices, considering the extent to which they were intended to function like artistically rendered portraits, paying particular attention to differing modes of display. Following on from this, I will discuss the possible motivations for adapting a death mask, the very potency of which lies in its seeming authenticity.
Leopold’s absorption in these final portraits of his beloved wife demonstrate the power of portraiture as a site of remembrance during the early nineteenth century in Britain. Using the death of Princess Charlotte as a case study, this paper considers the notion that during this period portraits provided visual comfort to the viewer following the death of the sitter. I will suggest that the contemplation of such works was an important element in the grieving process and the lack of such an image could be deeply upsetting, even damaging to those left behind.
In Scott’s 1871 centenary exhibition in Edinburgh, the death mask was put on display in amongst portraits rendered from life and objects associated with or once owned by Scott. The death mask caused a stir – as the catalogue states, ‘there was perhaps nothing in the whole Exhibition of greater interest than the original Mask’.
This paper will focus on the bronze death mask still on display at Abbotsford and consider how this curious object operated as a kind of secular relic in amongst the mementos from Scotland’s past that Scott had so avidly collected; a temporal bridge from past to present. I will discuss this key moment in Scottish visual culture, before photography emerged as the predominant mode of automatic reproduction, and consider how this process of remembrance created an experience of death that was both haptic and optic, exact and emotional, thereby revealing the fascination with mankind’s inevitable end at the dawn of the Victorian age.
Shortly after her death, there was an outburst of commemoration. Prints, pottery and medals were produced giving everyone the opportunity to participate in this shared grief. Rather than focusing on an individual’s desire to preserve the memory of a loved one, artists had to develop a language in which to express the grief of a nation.
This paper will explore the ways in which artists and craftsmen approach this shared loss, their sources of inspiration and use of particular motifs. While attention will be paid to objects produced in the wake of the Princess’s death, the focus of the paper will be on the profusion of prints. Some of these works incorporated existing portraits of the Princess in addition to particular motifs and/or verses of poetry. Others created apotheosis images accentuating the virtue and goodness for which the Princess was known. Others depicted her on her deathbed with her loving husband collapsed in grief by her side. Each of these types of prints were sanctioned and kept by the Princess’s family and consumed by the public as a whole.
By considering the commissioning of these works and the numbers in which they were produced, I will argue that the public’s grief was twofold. These prints gave people the opportunity to lament the tragedy of the event but they also acted as a way of expressing the nation’s dissatisfaction with the monarchy and the uncertainty of future sovereignty.
Many posthumous portraits were commissioned during this period and in a variety of forms. Some represented the sitter as in life, others in a spiritualised form, and in some instances, after death. By considering specific case studies and with the aid of sermons, poems, diaries and letters, this paper will investigate the reasons for these various types of posthumous portraits and consider the commissioning, display and intended audience of each. In doing so much will be revealed about mourning in the late Georgian period, making reference to the later artistic practices of the Victorian era.
I will argue that posthumous portraits at this time constitute a marked shift in the history of representing death within art and must be considered as a way of coming to terms with death on an emotional level rather than asserting the dynastic importance of the family.
experience of lifting the lid and the traces of life to reveal the death mask concealed beneath, presented the viewer with the absolute and unalterable finality of death.
But how did this object so lacking in life function as anything more than a weak referent to the absent body? Surely the hard, white materiality of the death mask prevented any real engagement with it, stripping the viewer of any true sense of the deceased in life.
Lawrence’s death mask in this regard exceeds its limitations by marking his existence through trace, touch and abject remains with the addition of actual remnants of his body and the tools of his trade. Does Lawrence’s death mask therefore, mark the point at which commemoration and deified celebration made way for a more encompassing and personal memorial on the brink of the Victorian Age? In this paper, I discussed this key moment in early nineteenth century visual culture, before photography emerged as the predominant mode of automatic reproduction. I considered how this process of remembrance created an experience of death that was both haptic and optic, exact and emotional, thereby revealing the contemporary fascination with mankind’s inevitable end.
Talks by Emily Knight
The editors James Engell and Michael D. Raymond will discuss this book with:
Fiona Stafford (Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford)
Emily Knight (D.Phil candidate in HIstory of Art, University of Oxford)
Professor Steven Matthews (Professor in English Literature (Modernism), University of Reading)
A frozen expression, sunken eyes and that famous mole, the death mask of Oliver Cromwell provides an eerie encounter with the face of a man long deceased. My talk focuses on the practice of taking death masks, how and when they were made, where they were displayed and how they have been considered over time. Using Oliver Cromwell’s death mask as a starting point, I will make reference to other death masks taken from the faces of the ‘famous and infamous’ and discuss phrenology, the practice of interpreting the shape of someone skull as a way of identifying someone extraordinary talents or terrifying malice.
Published works by Emily Knight
Events by Emily Knight
Focusing primarily on death masks made during the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries in Britain, this paper will examine the various ways in which artists have modified death masks in order to create a more life-like image of the deceased. I will situate these augmented casts within the context of contemporary memorialisation practices, considering the extent to which they were intended to function like artistically rendered portraits, paying particular attention to differing modes of display. Following on from this, I will discuss the possible motivations for adapting a death mask, the very potency of which lies in its seeming authenticity.
Leopold’s absorption in these final portraits of his beloved wife demonstrate the power of portraiture as a site of remembrance during the early nineteenth century in Britain. Using the death of Princess Charlotte as a case study, this paper considers the notion that during this period portraits provided visual comfort to the viewer following the death of the sitter. I will suggest that the contemplation of such works was an important element in the grieving process and the lack of such an image could be deeply upsetting, even damaging to those left behind.
In Scott’s 1871 centenary exhibition in Edinburgh, the death mask was put on display in amongst portraits rendered from life and objects associated with or once owned by Scott. The death mask caused a stir – as the catalogue states, ‘there was perhaps nothing in the whole Exhibition of greater interest than the original Mask’.
This paper will focus on the bronze death mask still on display at Abbotsford and consider how this curious object operated as a kind of secular relic in amongst the mementos from Scotland’s past that Scott had so avidly collected; a temporal bridge from past to present. I will discuss this key moment in Scottish visual culture, before photography emerged as the predominant mode of automatic reproduction, and consider how this process of remembrance created an experience of death that was both haptic and optic, exact and emotional, thereby revealing the fascination with mankind’s inevitable end at the dawn of the Victorian age.
Shortly after her death, there was an outburst of commemoration. Prints, pottery and medals were produced giving everyone the opportunity to participate in this shared grief. Rather than focusing on an individual’s desire to preserve the memory of a loved one, artists had to develop a language in which to express the grief of a nation.
This paper will explore the ways in which artists and craftsmen approach this shared loss, their sources of inspiration and use of particular motifs. While attention will be paid to objects produced in the wake of the Princess’s death, the focus of the paper will be on the profusion of prints. Some of these works incorporated existing portraits of the Princess in addition to particular motifs and/or verses of poetry. Others created apotheosis images accentuating the virtue and goodness for which the Princess was known. Others depicted her on her deathbed with her loving husband collapsed in grief by her side. Each of these types of prints were sanctioned and kept by the Princess’s family and consumed by the public as a whole.
By considering the commissioning of these works and the numbers in which they were produced, I will argue that the public’s grief was twofold. These prints gave people the opportunity to lament the tragedy of the event but they also acted as a way of expressing the nation’s dissatisfaction with the monarchy and the uncertainty of future sovereignty.
Many posthumous portraits were commissioned during this period and in a variety of forms. Some represented the sitter as in life, others in a spiritualised form, and in some instances, after death. By considering specific case studies and with the aid of sermons, poems, diaries and letters, this paper will investigate the reasons for these various types of posthumous portraits and consider the commissioning, display and intended audience of each. In doing so much will be revealed about mourning in the late Georgian period, making reference to the later artistic practices of the Victorian era.
I will argue that posthumous portraits at this time constitute a marked shift in the history of representing death within art and must be considered as a way of coming to terms with death on an emotional level rather than asserting the dynastic importance of the family.
experience of lifting the lid and the traces of life to reveal the death mask concealed beneath, presented the viewer with the absolute and unalterable finality of death.
But how did this object so lacking in life function as anything more than a weak referent to the absent body? Surely the hard, white materiality of the death mask prevented any real engagement with it, stripping the viewer of any true sense of the deceased in life.
Lawrence’s death mask in this regard exceeds its limitations by marking his existence through trace, touch and abject remains with the addition of actual remnants of his body and the tools of his trade. Does Lawrence’s death mask therefore, mark the point at which commemoration and deified celebration made way for a more encompassing and personal memorial on the brink of the Victorian Age? In this paper, I discussed this key moment in early nineteenth century visual culture, before photography emerged as the predominant mode of automatic reproduction. I considered how this process of remembrance created an experience of death that was both haptic and optic, exact and emotional, thereby revealing the contemporary fascination with mankind’s inevitable end.
The editors James Engell and Michael D. Raymond will discuss this book with:
Fiona Stafford (Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford)
Emily Knight (D.Phil candidate in HIstory of Art, University of Oxford)
Professor Steven Matthews (Professor in English Literature (Modernism), University of Reading)
A frozen expression, sunken eyes and that famous mole, the death mask of Oliver Cromwell provides an eerie encounter with the face of a man long deceased. My talk focuses on the practice of taking death masks, how and when they were made, where they were displayed and how they have been considered over time. Using Oliver Cromwell’s death mask as a starting point, I will make reference to other death masks taken from the faces of the ‘famous and infamous’ and discuss phrenology, the practice of interpreting the shape of someone skull as a way of identifying someone extraordinary talents or terrifying malice.
Throughout her twenty-one years, Princess Charlotte was considered the ‘Hope of England’. The product of one of the most dysfunctional marriages in British royal history, her life was plagued by restrictions, betrayals, abandonment and misfortune. After her marriage to Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg her luck seemed to have changed but just over a year later, she gave birth to a stillborn son and tragically died shortly afterwards. The nation mourned her loss on a scale almost without precedent and soon afterwards, biographies, poems and commemorative prints were produced, a number of which are now held at the Ashmolean Museum. Princess Charlotte’s death ended the direct line of Hanoverian succession and the Regent’s siblings raced to produce a child that would take her place.
This symposium facilitated a discussion that considered Princess Charlotte as a fulcrum in the latter years of the Hanoverian dynasty. Referring to prints and drawings from the collection of the Ashmolean, we used Princess Charlotte as a rallying point from which to work inwards and outwards. We discussed the hostile relationship between her parents, the Prince Regent and Caroline of Brunswick and how their treatment of their daughter was regarded by the public, the political implications of Charlotte’s death to Britain and Europe as a whole, the development of a familial ideal that came to fruition during the reign of Charlotte’s cousin, Queen Victoria.
that we are able to study plaster casts of ancient monuments that have since been destroyed or worn away by time. Considering molds’ social, and not simply practical, function therefore opens up broader questions about mimesis, temporality, memory, and presence, as well as the influence of likeness and creativity upon them. This session seeks papers that explore the mold as more than a tool, but instead a means of making that is integral to the way in which the objects that result from it functioned and were understood.
Following CAA guidelines, please send
1. an abstract of no more than 250 words
2. an email explaining your interest in the session, expertise
in the topic, and availability during the conference.
3. a shortened CV
to Hannah Wirta Kinney (Hannah.Kinney@history.ox.ac.uk) and Emily Knight (Emily.Knight@history.ox.ac.uk). The deadline for submission is August 14, 2017.