Stephen Thompson 153 Central American material including Aztec (Mexica) pieces. The British Museum had acquired Henry Christy’s extensive ethnographic collection in 1865 (see Elliot 2009 in Tribal Art magazine) and many of Thompson’s photographs feature these pieces. While Franks selected the objects, it seems likely that Thompson was involved in grouping, displaying, and lighting the items. In addition to the many obvious masterpieces that these images contain, it is interesting to see the inclusion of pieces of remarkably poor quality and even obvious fakes, something we today do not typically associate with such an early time period. Aimed at the widest possible audience, the series was made available for purchase as sets, as separate divisions of forty-five prints within sets, or as individual images. Prices ranged from two shillings for a single, unmounted print to between £116.2s.6d and £143 for the seven-volume set, depending on the binding. A 120-page catalog with a fifty-page introduction by Harrison cost sixpence. The complete set of all 929 photographs was displayed in the museum’s entrance hall and the relevant portfolio of prints was displayed in each museum department for maximum visibility and publicity. Oddly, the museum seems to have largely forgotten this project and today Thompson’s images are frequently misattributed in its collection database. For the next few years, Thompson worked on several further commissions for the British Museum. He also undertook work for the Arundel Society for Promoting the Knowledge of Art and for the Society for Biblical Archaeology. He copied drawings in the Queen’s collection and made photographic tours of Cyprus, Italy, and Mont St Michel in France. He was planning a trip to Mosul (now in northern Iraq) to photograph the archaeological excavations there, but his second bankruptcy, in 1877, may have persuaded him that a change of environment and country was what his career needed. In August 1880 Thompson and his family arrived in Melbourne, Australia. There he photographed and wrote descriptive notices for the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition and then worked to catalog and classify the collection of the Melbourne Art Museum. He later served as assistant librarian of the Public Library, but was also performing a curatorial role in everything but name. He regularly contributed articles on the arts to various publications. Much lauded in the Australian press for his artistic and literary abilities, he seems to have been well liked and respected, but his job eventually became untenable and he returned to England in 1886. Back in London, Thompson reinvented himself as an expert on all matters Australian, writing and illustrating articles for the Art Journal, The Magazine of Art, and The Graphic and Contemporary Review. Increasingly poor health prompted him to return to Australia in November 1890 for the benefits of a sunnier climate, but he died two years later, on 2 December 1892, and lies today in St Kilda Cemetery, Melbourne. While Thompson’s photographs were extensively published, he apparently spent more time behind the camera than in front of it. No portrait of him has been positively identified. NOTE: In the photo captions for this article, the italic header quotes the 1872 descriptive information for each image. The entries below cite contemporary information about actual objects, accurately identified whenever possible. FIG. 11: Plate 84: Carving in wood, probably from a canoe. New Zealand. Lintel or panel (pare or korupe). Maori, Poverty Bay, New Zealand. 1800–1820. Donated by Sir George Grey, 1856. Oc1854,1229.89. BIBLIOGRAPHY Edwards, Elizabeth. Raw Histories: Photographs, Anthropology, and Museums. Oxford: Berg, 2001. Elliot Weinberg, Catherine. “Henry Christy’s Ancient Mexican Treasures.” Tribal Art, summer 2009. Hamber, Anthony J. A Higher Branch of the Art: Photographing the Fine Arts in England, 1839–1880. Gordon & Breach Publishers, 1996. Jacobson, Ken & Jenny. Étude d’Après Nature: 19th Century Photographs in Relation to Art. Petches Bridge: Ken & Jenny Jacobson, 1996. Roberts, Pamela Glasson. “Stephen Thompson: A Photographer at the British Museum.“ Four Stories. Amc2, issue 2, 2012. Webb, Virginia-Lee. “In a Photographic Sense: Images of Art in the British Museum by Stephen Thomson.” Kaos Parcours des Mondes (catalog), Paris, 2006.
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