Whole plate image* of the celebrated Dr. Henry Jephson (1798-1878), physician and town father of Royal Leamington Spa in southern Warwickshire County, England – he was called, "the magician of the Leam." There may be only one other surviving photograph of Jephson whose reputation surpassed all British physicians of the first half of the nineteenth century, a reputation superinflated by extraordinary wealth and a medical empire amassed from trafficking in the healing properties of Leamington mineral waters and ownership of the surrounding real estate. The iconography provided by Eric G. Baxter in his biography of Dr. Jephson lists 5 photographic portraits, four of which that are poor reproductions including two of engravings. The 1865 Maull and Polyblank that has survived, archived at the Leamington Art Gallery and Museum, is too heavily worked in oils to be a good likeness.
When this portrait was taken, Henry Peach Robinson's studio was located at 15 Upper Parade in Leamington, not far from the Royal Pump Rooms and Jephson Gardens located at the bottom of Parade where gathered tourists and invalids from around the world to partake of the saline chalybeate water. An association with Robinson can be made by identification of the tablecloth which was also used for a study titled, Fleeting expression on the face of a child (Harker, Figure 13.; ca. 1857-58).** Both that work and Robinson's work for a series titled, The passions: fear, devotion, the miniature and vanity, are emulations of Dr. Diamond's masterful portraits of the insane at Surrey Asylum taken for a research project on the physiognomy of insanity.
This photograph has none of the qualities of an H. P. Robinson portrait, however, and all of the formal resonance of a Hugh Welch Diamond. A perceived elements of style in the work of photographers is discussed by Robinson in his book The Elements of a Pictorial Photograph where he wrote:
One of the earliest photographers to show genuine art feeling in his work was Rejlander. He died sixteen or seventeen years ago ; yet, among many thousands of photographs, it does not require much experience to recognise a Rejlander. There was nothing in the manipulation to distinguish them, except, perhaps, carelessness. It was the mind of the man that was visible, you recognise the man beyond the process. There are still those living who can say, on looking at a collection of old photographs, This is a Francis Bedford, a Dr. Diamond, a Fenton, a Delamotte, a Le Gray or Silvy, a Wingfield or a Mrs. Cameron, certainly quite as accurately as an expert in painting would say this is a Raphael, or Titian, or a Correggio. Then, what becomes of the machine argument ?
The attribution is helped along by the appearance of Dr. Diamond's handwriting, both for the caption and an inscription on the back of the print – the same handwriting which appears on the back of the Leigh print. But it is the signature of mind that is recognizably Diamond, subtle manipulations like exposure time, height and angle of the camera, positioning of the props, the viscosity of the emulsion. These mechanical choices can vary but subtler coincidents are more telling – the social intercourse between photographer and subject which can be read in the mood of the sitter, for example. And especially for Diamond, the choice of subject. To Robinson, sitters were no more than compositional blocks to be moved around with conceptual purpose until the picture felt right. This aesthetic handling is compellingly absent in Dr. Diamond's photographs whose portraits taken during the 1850's are more akin to modern snapshots. For Dr. Diamond, the narrative story told by mimetic muscles was his quarry, psychological truth his artistic vision. Which makes sense because he was a psychiatrist first, who in the second place was excited about photography and the potential of the camera for scientific documentation. His aesthetic derived from being rich enough and connected enough, that he could choose his subjects. His elements of style formed out of the contours of mind he could capture in collodion, the personality tics, the behavioral quirks which attracted his interest. Friends and patients were indistinguishable fodder for this criterion of style. A perfect subject might be a wealthy colleague who lived in a spa town, the sixth son of a country artisan who succeeded in lifting himself from impoverished means to become Britain's most celebrated physician, who always wore a glove over his left hand to hide the stump of a finger lost during an experiment with fulminating silver, a fellow freemason, and a potential patient who maybe – just maybe – suffered from hysterical blindness.
Dr. Henry Jephson had absolutely no use for photographers and their instruments after succumbing to total blindness in 1848. The diagnosis was gouty amaurosis, but his disease was unusual in its rapid progress and bilateral onset. There are no published reports that he ever recovered or that the disease was psychogenic except for a comment in his obituary for Medical times and gazette, which stated that Jephson's blindness was "probably not unconnected with failure of nerve-power, the result of overwork." What then, would motivate this blind doctor to visit Robinson's studio for a session with a psychiatrist/photographer? The likely date of the portrait suggests two possible reasons, the first regarding the financial difficulties of a friend. The winter after he took possession of his studio, 1857 to 1858, was unbearably difficult for Henry Peach Robinson – clients were scarce, his chemicals froze, and a fire caused quite a bit of destruction. The following spring Robinson was desperate enough to abandon his dreams and to try to find a buyer for the studio. He needed an angel and the portrait of Jephson may commemorate a business meeting arranged by Dr. Diamond. Robinson's prospects improved soon after and commercial success was assured in June when Queen Victoria, a former patient of Jephson's, dropped by to commission work. A second reason that would have brought Dr. Diamond to his friend's studio in Leamington occurred in November when Robinson himself went temporarily blind, probably from a confluence of factors including overwork, the illness of his much beloved mother and the chemical fumes he was absorbing. If Dr. Jephson were already treating Robinson, then the portrait might represent an exchange of goodwill on behalf of Diamond's young protege.
*The Critchett photo at Wellcome has the same arch template?
**It may also be the same tablecloth that can be seen in one of the aforementioned cameos.
