Due to renovation, life and death masks that have been on view in our Scribner room for many years are going back into our vaults. Thanks to John Delaney for the reference citations below. Seen above are (clockwise from the top standing):

Walt Whitman (1819-1892), original death mask by Samuel Murray, assisted by Eakins. See Moore, TALKS…, pp. 214-15, 223-4.

John Keats (1795-1821), life mask by Benjamin Robert Haydon, from the original in National Portrait Gallery, London. See Hutton, PORTRAITS…, pp. xv, 105-10; Moore, TALKS…, pp. 176, 177.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), death mask, from the original. See Hutton, PORTRAITS…, pp. 182-6; Moore, TALKS…, pp. 199-200; T. G. Willson, “The Death Masks of Dean Swift, Princeton University Library Chronicle, XVI, No. 3 (Spring 1955), 107-10; and Museum Objects Information File.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850), life mask, from the original by B. R. Haydon. See Hutton, PORTRAITS…, pp. 100-5; Moore, TALKS…, pp. 176-7.

Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), death mask [“Authenticity not verified”]. See “The Faces of Yorick,” by William Holtz, Queens Quarterly, LXXVI (1969), No. 3, an unpaginated offprint in Museum Objects Information File.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), death mask, from the original. See Hutton, Portraits…, pp. 96-100; Moore, Talks…, pp. 159-61.

                      
Keats (left) Whitman (right)