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| Unknown artist, c1640. NPG |
A new National Portrait Gallery display, Imagined Lives: portraits of unknown people, brings together a collection of works where the subjects have been misidentified.
One unusual deathbed portrait (above) was thought to be James Scott, Duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch, though this has since been discredited. The painting was produced around 1640, and to augment the display writer John Banville fills in the gaps by imagining the young man's childhood, education and ultimate fate serving in the New Model Army ...
Banville invents the name Launcelot Northbrook for the man, imagining him born in Chester in 1621 before enterting Sidney Sussex college, Cambridge, Cromwell's alma mater, and following the Lieutenant-General to Ireland.
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| Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge |
You can discover his fate in the fictional biography, which is also featured in the Guardian, here.
The display does suggest one possibility as the real identity of 'Northbrook': Edward Sackville, son of the 4th Earl of Dorset (1590–1652). Edward was wounded at the first Battle of Newbury 1643 before being married in 1645 to Bridget, Baroness Wray, daughter of Edward Wray. A year later he was taken prisoner by parliamentary soldiers at Kidlington, before (according to the Dictionary of National Biography), being 'murdered in cold blood at Chawley in the parish of Cumnor, near Oxford, 11 April 1646' (possbily by a member of the Abingdon garrison).
The painting was possibly owned by the Wray family in the 19th century, after being discovered in a farmhouse in Knole, Kent, suggesting Edward Sackville as a possible subject, though no further evidence has come to light to support this.
The NPG display has free entry, and runs 3 December 2011 - 1 August 2012.
Deathbed portraiture
The unusual deathbed portrait, so contrary in spirit to the familiar depiction of strutting Cavaliers, was fashionable during the first half of the 17th century. Metaphysical poets were influential in propograting the contemplation of one's own image as a momento mori. John Donne, in Elegy V: His Picture, for instance, writes:
Here take my picture; though I bid farewell
Thine, in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell.
'Tis like me now, but I dead, 'twill be more
When we are shadows both, than 'twas before.
The deathbed portrait on display in the NPG is far from unique. Other contemporary examples include (portrait links open in new window):- Sir Thomas Aston at the Deathbed of his First Wife (1635) by John Souch (Manchester Art Gallery)
- The Saltonstall Family (1636-37) by David Des Granges (Tate Britain)
- Venetia Stanley, Lady Digby, on her Deathbed (1633) by Van Dyck (Dulwich Picture Gallery).
The Aston picture is the most striking, while Venetia Stanley's tale of promiscuity and mysterious death makes an intriguing story.
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