“One little fellow, for instance, with a long thin neck, in a wheel chair, was splendid. That carpenter's shop with those two old men and a view of the cool green garden was just the thing, like Bingham's photograph of that little picture by Meissonier, those two priests sitting at the table drinking. Perhaps you know what I mean.” Letter from Vincent van Gogh to his brother, Theo, June, 1886. (Robert Harrison (ed.), Johanna van Gogh-Bonger (trans.) The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, Bulfinch, 1991) Robert Bingham was born around March, 1824 in Billesdon, Leicestershire. He studied chemistry and is sometimes described as having been an assistant to Michael Faraday though this is not confirmed. He authored the 1851 edition of George Knight’s Photographic Manual. In correspondence with lawyers and colleagues over the breaching of his calotype patent, William Fox Talbot occasionally mentions Bingham as one among several who have (illegally, in Talbot’s view) been given licences to produce photographs using the process. In 1851 or ’52 he moved to Paris and opened a studio specializing in the photographing of artworks. Although Frederick Scott Archer is acknowledged as the inventor of the wet collodion process, Bingham was aware of its potential and described its possibilities in 1847. This explains the claim on the back of his photographs that he is the inventor of the process. During the 1860s, at the height of his popularity, the painter Ernest Messonier insisted that only Bingham could photograph his work. Philippe Burty published a pamphlet, L’Oeuvre de M. Messonier et les photographies de M. Bingham in 1862, cataloguing their collaboration to that point. [Kindly contributed by John Toohey, June 2009] Some of William Fox Talbot's correspondence regarding Bingham can be found at www.midleykent.co.uk and other references at the Fox Talbot correspondence pages at www.foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk. |
