PORTFOLIO Stephen Thompson and the British Museum 144 By Pamela Glasson Roberts Captions by Jonathan Fogel dustrial Art and Sculpture at the International Exhibition for the exposition of 1862 at the South Kensington Museum (later renamed the Victoria and Albert Museum). There he photographed everything from jewelry to ebony cabinets via swords, statues, clocks, lace, glass, and ceramics, often in challenging lighting conditions. The techniques that Thompson developed to mitigate the technical difficulties of that project—making the best use of every fleeting ray of light by shooting from below or from unexpected angles to provide interesting shadow detail—proved to be excellent preparation for the subsequent three-year project he was to undertake with the British Museum. From 1869 to 1872, Thompson photographed around 5,000 objects to produce just short of a thousand negatives without the use of artificial light. Whether either Thompson or Harrison intended the project to be quite as large as it eventually became is a moot point. The resulting publication—British Museum Collections: Photographed by Stephen Thompson, with a Comprehensive Catalogue of the Objects Depicted and an Introduction by Charles Harrison—was published on 15 July 1872 by W. A. Mansell & Co. of 2 Percy Street, London. It was comprised of seven volumes containing 929 albumen photographs (a few more were added later), each measuring up to 12 x 10 inches (30 x 25 cm). The series covers the entire museum collection, but the first volume, with plates 1–157, is titled Pre-Historic, Ethnographical, and Christy Collection. The material in it was selected and cataloged by A. W. Franks, keeper of the British & Mediaeval Antiquities and Department of Ethnography. Harrison was also interested in ethnography and had been elected to the Ethnological Society in 1869, which may in part explain why such then-obscure material was given such prominence in the series. Thompson’s photographs of objects from Africa, the Pacific, and the Americas represent the earliest institutional ethnographic photographs in Britain. They include groups of everyday social items, ornaments, and tools from ancient civilizations; Maori and Polynesian artifacts secured by Captain Cook and his successors; and Peruvian and When it opened in 1759, the British Museum was an innovation. A national museum rather than one belonging to the nobility or the church, it was open to “all studious and curious persons” free of charge. The founding collection was that of physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane and included both antiquities and ethnographic objects. From the beginning, the museum focused on disseminating information about art, culture, and history to scholars and the public at large. In keeping with this, in 1869 Stephen Thompson (1830–1892) was engaged to make photographs of “various antiquities and coins” at the museum for use as an educational tool. It had employed a staff photographer, Roger Fenton (1819–1869) between 1853 and 1859 to create visual documentation of its collection. He had produced more than 8,000 negatives during his first two years’ practice there, enabling the museum to catalog, classify, publicize, and—hopefully—sell prints of its growing collection, but his employment was terminated in 1859 when costs escalated and the anticipated increase in print sales failed to materialize. Following this, the museum was apparently wary of further financial commitment for photography (it did not appoint another official photographer until July 1927), but private backers were not. Charles Harrison, a solicitor and accomplished amateur archaeologist, applied for permission for Thompson to photograph there and the work began in December 1869. During his thirty years of involvement with photography, Thompson produced a staggering amount of material. Equally accomplished at photographing landscapes, architecture, and art objects, he provided images for more than thirty illustrated books and portfolios, as well as showing extensively in the annual photographic exhibitions from 1861 to 1864. But despite working steadily, he declared bankruptcy twice—in 1866 and 1877—and struggled with ill health, doubtless exacerbated by toxic darkroom chemicals. Prior to his project at the British Museum, Thompson had created some 300 photographs of more than 1,000 objects for the three-volume catalog Masterpieces of In- FIG. 1: Cover page for volume one of British Museum Collections: Photographed by Stephen Thompson, with a Comprehensive Catalogue of the Objects Depicted and an Introduction by Charles Harrison, W. A. Mansell & Co., London, 1872. FIG. 2: Plate 48: Covered Ivory-Cup, and Horn, of West African manufacture, probably carved under Portuguese influence, date, 16th century; and part of an elephant’s tusk, recently carved by the natives of Loango.—Christy Coll. Left to right Carved ivory tusk. Loango, DR Congo. Before 1868. Donated by Bryce M. Wright, 1868. Af.4821. Ivory salt cellar. Sapi, Sierra Leone. 1490–1530. Donated by Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, 1869. Af.5117.a&b. Ivory hunting horn. Sapi, Sierra Leone. 1490–1530. Donated by Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, 1870. Af.7009. All images in this article courtesy of the Patrick, Philippe, Thierry Challande Collection, Geneva. Copy scans by Nicolas Lieber. With thanks to Michael Evans Tribal Art, Dijon.
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