DIAMOND, Dr Hugh Welch (1808–1886) - photo 1
DIAMOND, Dr Hugh Welch (1808–1886) - photo 2
DIAMOND, Dr Hugh Welch (1808–1886) - photo 3
DIAMOND, Dr Hugh Welch (1808–1886) - photo 4
DIAMOND, Dr Hugh Welch (1808–1886) - photo 5
DIAMOND, Dr Hugh Welch (1808–1886) - photo 6

DIAMOND, Dr Hugh Welch (1808–1886)

Lot 203
10.12.2025 12:00UTC +00:00
Classic
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CHRISTIE'S
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1514353
Lot 203 | DIAMOND, Dr Hugh Welch (1808–1886)
Estimate value
£ 100 000 – 200 000
DIAMOND, Dr Hugh Welch (1808–1886)
Twenty-two photographs of psychiatric patients at the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum [1850s]
The largest known group of Dr Hugh Welch Diamond’s pioneering photographs of psychiatric patients. Diamond stands as a foundational figure in the history of photography and was among the first to use photography as a clinical tool, stating in a paper delivered to the Royal Society of Medicine in 1856 that the ‘faithful likeness’ of the camera might aid diagnosis, teach observation, and even assist in cure by returning patients a coherent image of themselves. His striking portraits bring together the developing art of photography and the developing science of psychiatry.

Diamond trained as a doctor and, having distinguished himself as a physician during the outbreak of cholera in London in 1832, turned his focus to the problem of mental illness which he studied at London’s Bethlem Hospital. In 1848 Diamond was appointed as superintendent of the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum and it was here that he applied his photographic skills to his professional work as a physician and began to photograph his patients in simple poses against a plain background.

Diamond had made his first photograph in April 1839, just three months after William Henry Fox Talbot had announced his negative-positive process. In the 1840s Diamond befriended one of his patients, Frederick Scott Archer, and introduced him to the calotype process, and as a result of their friendship and shared interest in photography Diamond became one of the first people to use Archer’s collodion process which resulted in higher quality images from glass plate negatives.

Diamond published many articles on photography and, in 1853, became a founder member of the Photographic Society. Between 1852 and 1859 Diamond exhibited over 70 of his photographs in exhibitions across Britain, and although many were landscapes and other subjects, he also exhibited his clinical photographs including: ‘Types of Insanity’ (Society of Arts, London, 1852), ‘Phases of the Insane’ (Dundee Royal Infirmary Fund, 1854), ‘Phases of the Insane’ (London Photographic Society, 1854), ‘Melancholy’ (London Photographic Society, 1855), ‘Portraits of the Insane’ (Norwich Photographic Society, 1856), ‘Studies of Insane Persons’ (London Photographic Society, 1857), and ‘Illustrations of Mental Disease’ (London Photographic Society, 1859). Diamond’s portraits were also reproduced as lithographs to accompany John Conolly’s article Case Studies from the Physiognomy of Insanity published in the ‘Medical Times and Gazette’ in 1858.

Diamond was well known in photographic circles and received many visitors while working in Surrey including Lewis Carroll and Reginald Southey who visited Diamond in January 1856, ‘as Carroll records in his diary: ‘“Southey came over to spend the day in photography, but we went instead to Dr Diamond of the Surrey Lunatic Asylum: he gave me two [photographs] he has done lately, an excellent full length of Uncle Skeffington and a boy of King’s College, Frank Foster.” Carroll’s recollection shows how the rise of photography was linked to psychiatry through the figure of Hugh Welch Diamond, whose work, alongside that of Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne de Boulogne, was a significant influence on Darwin’s work on The Expression of Emotion (1872)’ (Kohlt, Franziska E., The Stupidest Tea-Party in All My Life’: Lewis Carroll and Victorian Psychiatric Practice, Journal of Victorian Culture, 2016, Vol. 21, No. 2, 147–167).

In Diamond’s paper presented to the Royal Society of Medicine in 1856, he described the portraits of his patients: ‘The Photographer catches in a moment the permanent cloud, or the passing storm or sunshine of the soul, and thus enables the metaphysician to witness and trace out the connexion between the visible and the invisible in one important branch of his researches into the Philosophy of the human mind’ (On the Application of Photography to the Physiognomic and Mental Phenoma of Insanity, May 22, 1856). Diamond was thus among the first to understand photography not only as a technical innovation, but as a tool for psychological insight.

22 albumen prints (each approximately 180 x 138mm., 4 oval shaped and one with trimmed corners), on 3 card mounts numbered ‘I’ and ‘II’ and ‘III’, the first two mounts of 9 photographs each in modern frames for exhibition purposes, the 4 photographs on mount ‘III’ mounted with other photographs in the folio volume 'Royal Med. Chi. Society. Photographs. A. Medical &c.'

Together with 74 albumen prints by other photographers in 2 large folio albums compiled by the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society in the 1860s. The other named photographers are Thomas Henry Hennah (1826-1876, 4 photographs), Dr Julius Pollock (1835-1890, 11 photographs), Mr Mullens of Jersey (probably the Jersey photographer Henry Mullins (1848-1874), one photograph), Charles Heisch (1820-1892, one photograph), Dr William Budd (1811-1880, 5 photographs), Dr Henry G. Wright (one photograph), and Dr C. T. Richardson (one photograph). Provenance: Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, London (these 2 albums compiled circa 1862 by Dr Henry G. Wright, a Fellow of the Society)

2 volumes, large folio (657 x 500mm), 96 albumen prints (various sizes from 86 x 58mm to 234 x 334mm), on 18 thick card mounts (numbered I-XI and I-VII), mounted recto only, dark green half morocco, green cloth boards, upper covers titled in gilt (one volume rebacked and re-cornered)




Exhibited

2008 'El mundo descrito', Fundación ICO, Madrid, 7 February – 4 May 2008.
2007 'How We Are: Photographing Britain', Tate Britain, London, 22 May – 2 September 2007.
2006 'Melancholie – Genie und Wahnsinn in der Kunst', Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, 17 February – 7 May 2006.
2005-06 'Mélancolie: génie et folie en Occident', Grand Palais, Paris, 10 October 2005 – 16 January 2006.
2000-01 'Spectacular Bodies: The Art and Science of the Human Body from Leonardo da Vinci to Now', Hayward Gallery, London, 19 October 2000 – 14 January 2001.
1988 'The Mind', Impressions Gallery of Photography, York, 12 – 23 January 1988
Auction house category:Books and manuscripts
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
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