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Identifying the Patient in George W Lambert's Chesham Street

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Identifying the Patient in George W Lambert's Chesham Street JMH Online First, published on January 24, 2013 as 10.1136/medhum-2012-010274 Original article Med Humanities: first published as 10.1136/medhum-2012-010274 on 24 January 2013. Downloaded from Identifying the patient in George W Lambert’s Chesham Street Keren Rosa Hammerschlag Correspondence to ABSTRACT Paris) and infant patients (eg, in Luke Fildes’ The Dr Keren Rosa Hammerschlag, This paper takes as its focus one of the Edwardian Doctor, 1891, Tate, London). Centre for the Humanities and ’ fi Health, King’s College period s most dramatic and little-understood paintings of In the rst section of this paper, I argue that the London, 5th Floor, East Wing, a medical examination: George Washington Lambert’s subject of a medical examination offered Lambert Strand Campus, London Chesham Street (1910). The painting shows an upper- homoerotic possibilities by bringing into close, WC2R 2LS, UK; class male patient lifting his shirt to reveal a muscular intimate contact two men of similar class standing. [email protected] torso for examination by the doctor in the scene and the I posit that the painting illustrates the deployment Received 17 October 2012 viewers outside it. The subject of a medical examination, of the visual and aural senses in early twentieth- Accepted 30 November 2012 I argue, legitimised the scrutiny of exposed male flesh century medical diagnostics, but also explores the and offered an opportunity for sensual pleasure between sensual pleasures involved in being a patient. In the men. paper’s second section, I locate in the figure of By way of a comparison with other portraits of the the patient signifiers of the complex and sometimes artist from around the same period, I interpret Chesham conflicted identity of Lambert as an Australian Street as a patient self-portrait, which reveals the artist’s expatriate artist living and working in London in dual personalities of bohemian artist and Australian the early twentieth century. In the patient’s dinner boxer: two personae that did not combine seamlessly, as suit, manicured moustache and pompous expres- revealed by the composite nature of the patient in sion I identify Lambert the gentleman-bohemian Chesham Street. From a discussion of the artist as artist; in the deliberate placement of his hands patient, I move to an analysis of other self-portraits by I locate Lambert the skilled craftsman; and in the Lambert in which the artist is shown flexing his muscles, muscular torso I find Lambert the working-class especially in the context of his passion for boxing. I Australian sportsman. consider how these portraits serve as complex There is nothing in the painting’s title to suggest inscriptions of illness and health and how this relates to that it is a self-portrait. In fact, the painting the experience of living and working as an Australian has regularly been misnamed Harley Street, which expatriate artist in London in the early twentieth century. would have placed the scene in the heart of medical London. Nonetheless, Lambert was a prolific portrait painter, repeatedly producing puz- zling pictures of himself, his family and his friends in unexpected places and in different guises http://mh.bmj.com/ INTRODUCTION (eg, Self-portrait with gladioli, 1922, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra). He shared in the con- If there was anything interesting to hear students temporary vogue for fancy dress, being photo- applied their stethoscope: you would see a man ‘ ’ with two or three to the chest, and two perhaps to graphed as Lord Thomas Seymour at the Chelsea his back, while others waited impatiently to listen. Pageant (postcard held in the Mitchell Library, The patient stood among them a little embar- State Library of NSW) and appearing in ‘Mr Leon rassed, but not altogether displeased to find Gellert as the Lambert self-portrait, together with on September 26, 2021 by guest. Protected copyright. himself the centre of attention (Maugham, p 441)1 its original, Mr George Lambert, as a Persian Prince’ published in The Home in 1923.3 It is in In 1910, George Washington Lambert (1873– this category of images that Chesham Street 1930), an Australian artist living in London, exhib- belongs. ited at the New English Art Club an intimately sized painting of a medical examination entitled Chesham Street (figure 1). This painting has received almost SECTION I: THE MEDICAL ENCOUNTER no critical scholarly attention to date.i Chesham Listen and look Street is a unique example from the Edwardian At the time of its first exhibition, critics identified period of a depiction of a medical examination of Chesham Street as an auscultation scene, a subject an upper-class male patient. In this way, it contrasts they found to have passed beyond ‘the bounds of 4 with earlier artistic examples of working-class permissible ugliness’. The writer for The Times patients (eg, in Henri Toulouse Lautrec’s Rue des stated that, ‘When Rembrandt twice painted a Moulins: The Medical Inspection, c.1894, National dissecting-room he had a real subject; but an aus- Gallery of Art, Washington), female patients (eg, in cultation such as Mr Lambert has painted is 4 Pierre André Brouillet’s Clinical Lesson at the nothing but an ugly incident’. To cite: Hammerschlag KR. Salpêtrière, 1887, Musée d’Histoire de la Médecine, Chesham Street recalls pictures of women under- Med Humanit Published ’ Online First: [Please include going auscultations, such as Jules-Abel Faivre s The Day Month Year] Examination (c.1898; figure 2) and Albert doi:10.1136/medhum-2012- iOne exception is Jongwoo Kim’s description of the work Guillaume’s The Doctor (1903; Bibliotheque 010274 in his conclusion to Kim.2 Nationale, Paris). All these works explore the HammerschlagCopyright KR. MedArticle Humanit author2013;0:1 (or–9. doi:10.1136/medhum-2012-010274their employer) 2013. Produced by BMJ Publishing Group Ltd under licence. 1 Original article Med Humanities: first published as 10.1136/medhum-2012-010274 on 24 January 2013. Downloaded from No stethoscope is visible in Faivre’s, Guillaume’s or Lambert’s pictures. Despite the invention of the stethoscope by René Laennec in the early nineteenth century, ‘immediate ausculta- tion’—that is, when a doctor would put an ear directly onto the patient’s chest—persisted into the twentieth century. According to Samuel J Gee in his manual on auscultation and percussion of 1908, ‘Since [Laennec’s] day the stethoscope has been dis- carded by many persons, who, preferring immediate to mediate auscultation, apply the ear to the chest. And doubtless the sounds are heard loudest in this way; they are weakened by con- duction through a stethoscope’ (Gee, p 82).5 In Chesham Street, the doctor turns his head to the side in a way that suggests that he is listening to the patient’s chest. The artist emphasises the doctor’s aural sense by highlighting his ear in red paint. William Bynum has shown how the nature of medical examination was transformed during the nineteenth century from a patient-history based model in the eighteenth century, in which doctors and patients would engage in a conver- sation, to one in which doctors deployed their senses of sight, touch, sound, and smell to arrive at a diagnosis.6 Hence, on first estimation, Chesham Street might be considered illustrative of the nature of medical examinations during the Edwardian period. On closer inspection, however, while the patient and doctor together inhabit a shallow pictorial space, the doctor does not actually touch the patient; neither does he look at him. Rather, in turning his head, the doctor looks down towards the urine flask in the painting’s left foreground, his profile set against the Figure 1 George W Lambert, Chesham Street, 1910, oil on canvas, lighter tone of the patient’s body. He cups his chin with his 62×51.5 cm, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Purchased 1993. hand in a gesture that connotes contemplation, the suggestion being that he is examining the urine for its colouration, quality potentially erotic nature of medical examinations. In Faivre’s or transparency. Aesthetic categories associated with the evalu- treatment, the elderly doctor places his head against the young ation of art are here being applied to the diagnosis of urine. girl’s chest, conveniently and comically close to her exposed According to this interpretation, the painting prioritises the act breasts. But in Chesham Street the male patient stands upright of looking (we look at the body of the patient, the patient looks with a condescending expression, in contrast to Faivre’s female at us, and the doctor looks at the urine) in both medical diag- ii patient who lies recumbent in bed with a coy expression. nostics and artistic evaluation. A comparison between the works demonstrates the distinctness http://mh.bmj.com/ of Chesham Street as a picture of an arrogant upper-class male patient, displaying his body in such a way as to suggest that the Touch and taste examination is taking place on his own terms. Lambert never explicitly referred to the subject of the painting as an auscultation, describing it more generally as ‘the picture of the half clothed man being examined by the doctor’.8 It is my argument that Chesham Street is a study in the pleasures of self- exposure involved in being medically examined. In other words, on September 26, 2021 by guest. Protected copyright. the painting explores the sensual enjoyment of being a patient. As the patient lifts up his shirt, he gently presses the top of his chest with the three bottom fingers of his right hand, precar- iously close to his nipple, thereby registering a touch of autoero- ticism. The flash of bright red paint on the patient’s bottom lip intimates the sense of taste, appearing like a smear of blood, which connotes passion or even violence.
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