Nollekens, Joseph--Pitt, William, the Younger

These were the final words of William Pitt, the Younger, who died on 23 January 1806 aged 46. He had been British Prime Minister for nearly half of his life and had guided the nation through the most perilous years of the Napoleonic Wars. The unceasing strain of these years (not helped by copious quantities of port) had left him utterly exhausted, and contemporaries who saw him in his final weeks describe a frail, worn-out man with lifeless eyes and a hollow voice. Whilst Nelson's victory at Trafalgar had removed the immediate threat of invasion, Napoleon's comprehensive triumph at the Battle of Austerlitz had left him master of Europe and destroyed the coalition of allies that had cost Pitt years of delicate negotiation to bring together. It was generally accepted that news of Austerlitz was Pitt's death blow. This mask bears the emaciated features of a man worn out by the anxiety of protecting Britain from the genius of Napoleon. 

Pitt's death mask was taken by the sculptor Joseph Nollekens. Busts based on death masks were such an important part of Nollekens's successful business that, as his biographer recalled, "after reading the death of any great person in the newspaper, [he] generally ordered some plaster to be got ready, so that he might attend at a minute's notice." He was particularly pleased with Pitt's mask:

"On Mr Nollekens's return from Putney Common, after taking Mr Pitt's mask, he observed to Mr [Sebastian] Gahagan [his assistant], pointing to it on the opposite seat of the coach, 'There, I would not take fifty guineas for that mask, I can tell ye.'" (J.T. Smith, Nollekens and His Times, ed. W. Whitten (1920), vol. I, pp.367-68)

Nollekens used his mask as the basis for a bust, which he sold both in marble and in plaster replica, and it also informed his statue of Pitt at the Senate House, Cambridge. A similar copy of the death mask, without neck, remains with the Trustees of the Chevening Estate.