Great Train Robber’s death mask
Nick Reynolds has sculpted death masks for everyone from his Great Train Robber father to Peter O’toole
It all started with a school trip to Warwick Castle. There in a case was the death mask of Oliver Cromwell, who once instructed a portrait artist to paint him ‘warts and all’. And there the warts were – yuck!
Morbidly fascinated, I was amazed one could stare at the actual facial features of a historical person who had been dead for centuries. This incident led
me, years later, to form the only company in Britain that specialises in death masks.
Death masks are the only accurate representation of a person in death, created by means of a mould made directly from the subject’s actual features. The face is greased and a thin layer of plaster applied, which is then reinforced with more plaster and scrim (a loose, woven material). This creates a negative impression of the subject’s features with incredible detail. When it’s filled with wax or plaster, it creates the positive version – the death mask.
During this process, I feel something of the mystery of death seems to pass into the mask, providing a glimpse into that sublime moment between life and death. While mortal features crumble to dust, the death mask retains them. With closed eyes, the subject appears as if in an eternal sleep, dreaming and somehow partially trapped on this earthly plane.
Death masks were once commonplace, as a sculptor’s aid to produce a postmortem bust. Examples included royalty, politicians, poets (including Keats), composers and popular figures. Hundreds have survived the ages, enabling us to know what historical figures such as Napoleon and Beethoven actually looked like.
The first written mention of death masks comes from Pliny the Elder, the Roman author. The oldest actual examples we have come from ancient Egypt. The Romans kept wax death masks of their ancestors as a kind of physiognomic family tree and a form of ancestor worship. At special events, the masks would be worn by professional actors, bringing the person temporarily back to life. Their production is credited with aiding the development of realistic Roman portraiture and, centuries later, the artistic achievements of the Renaissance.
During the 12th century, royal funerary customs in Europe were becoming increasingly lengthy. As the royal corpse lay in state during the proceedings, preservation became a problem –Henry IV’S body was particularly fragile after his death in 1413. So it became the norm to substitute the rotten corpse with a realistic effigy,
using a wax death mask. Many examples, including Henry VII’S death mask, can still be seen in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries in Westminster Abbey.
In the Victorian era, when people were obsessed with the Gothic majesty of death and the memento mori, death masks enjoyed a golden age as souvenirs of deceased loved ones. They became common items in middle-class households. Anthropologists used life and death masks to collect data on racial differences and to record variations in human physiognomy, including among famous people and notorious criminals. This study gave rise to the pseudoscience of phrenology, which claimed a person’s character could be determined by the bumps on his or her head.
Death masks of criminals became, like scalps, powerful symbols of state enforcement agencies, echoing the French Revolution, during which dismembered heads would be paraded on spikes as a reminder of what might happen to transgressors. These were gruesomely recreated in wax by Madame Tussaud (1761-1850). The invention of photography would inevitably replace death masks and the practice fell out of fashion.
Although death masks are inherently imbued with sadness, this is outweighed by their positive and cathartic attributes. They represent a life, with every detail a repository of countless memories. More concrete and tactile than a photograph, they offer solace and familiarity via touch as well as sight. As solid entities, they have a presence and they fill part of the empty space one is left with in a sudden bereavement – until we are ready to let them go.
They anchor us to earth and help us confront something we all fear – the one thing we can be certain of in life: death. Sometimes we need death to appreciate life. Damien Hirst put it well in the title of his formaldehyde-preserved shark: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.
The first death mask I made came about by chance. As the son of Great Train Robber Bruce Reynolds, I was given access to – and allowed to cast the live heads of – Britain’s most notorious living criminals for an exhibition called Cons to Icons. By the time I tracked down George ‘Taters’ Chatham (1912-1997) – a cat burglar, safe-cracker and armed robber dubbed ‘the thief of the century’ by the Guardian – he was dead. Nonetheless, his sister gave me permission to cast him, believing that the smile on his face indicated he had made his peace with God. I didn’t tell her it was the weight of his jowls that had produced the effect.
And so, 22 years later, despite death-mask design being literally a dying art, I’ve lost count of how many I have made. My most memorable commission was John Joe Amador (1975-2007), a Hispanic prisoner executed in Texas for killing a taxi driver. His body was still warm and his flesh still developed goose bumps due to the cold moulding material. I strongly believed him to be innocent; the mask was used as part of an exhibition to highlight the horrors of death row and featured in a Victoria and Albert Museum show.
Death masks are a very personal thing. Sometimes when I take on a commission I have to sign a non-disclosure agreement. I generally don’t talk about the masks unless the person concerned is in the public eye.
I have three bronze death masks in Highgate Cemetery: my father, Bruce Reynolds (1931-2013), the punk impresario Malcolm Mclaren (19462010) and an Iranian surgeon/activist Manuchehr Sabetian (1928-2013). Other notable masks I’ve done include former Times editor William Rees-mogg (1928-2012), film director Ken Russell, artist Sebastian Horsley, proprietor of the Colony Room Michael Wojas (1956-2010) and the former President of Biafra General Ojukwu (1933-2011).
At Peter O’toole’s wake at the Garrick after his death, aged 81, in 2013, my bag split and Peter’s bronze hand fell on poor Barry Cryer’s foot. He was livid until I told him whose hand it was. Then he ran round the bar with the hand in his own hand, shouting in mock anger, ‘Damn you, O’toole!’
It helps to have a good sense of humour, but this year has been particularly grim. Usually I deal with older people, in which case a mask seems a fitting tribute and celebration of a life well lived. Sadly, in the last few months my clients have included a young man who jumped off Beachy Head, a 15-yearold female cancer victim, a two-week-old baby and Jake Black, aka the Very Reverend D Wayne Love, aged 59. He was the co-writer of the theme tune for The Sopranos and was lead singer of the band Alabama 3. I play harmonica in the group.
Still, as my old man would say – and the words are written on his tombstone in Highgate Cemetery, next to his death mask – ‘ C’est la vie!’