By tracing its journeys, we discover that over the course of time it has been considered by some to be ‘an inhabited library,’ and by others, ‘a deserted library,’ ‘a dead library,’ and ‘an avatar.’ The library reached a point when it became disembodied, with the books (organs) castrated from the original bookcase, furniture or, boiserie (the body) that its founder and former owner designed especially for them. Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) - known especially for his work on ‘hysteria’ - which after 150 years became a patrimonial one. This paper confronts, initially, the personal library of the French neurologist, Dr. I consider how these portraits serve as complex inscriptions of illness and health and how this relates to the experience of living and working as an Australian expatriate artist in London in the early twentieth century.
From a discussion of the artist as patient, I move to an analysis of other self-portraits by Lambert in which the artist is shown flexing his muscles, especially in the context of his passion for boxing. By way of a comparison with other portraits of the artist from around the same period, I interpret 'Chesham Street' as a patient self-portrait, which reveals the artist’s dual personalities of bohemian artist and Australian boxer-two personae that did not combine seamlessly, as revealed by the composite nature of the patient in 'Chesham Street'. The setting of the doctor’s consulting room, I argue, legitimises the scrutiny of exposed male flesh, while the experience of being medically examined is shown to offer an opportunity for revelation, vulnerability and even sensual pleasure. The painting shows an upper-class male patient lifting his shirt to reveal a muscular torso for examination by the doctor in the scene and the viewers outside it. This paper takes as its focus one of the Edwardian period’s most dramatic and little-understood paintings of a medical examination: George Washington Lambert’s 'Chesham Street' (1910).
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