Getty Museum

[George Combe]

Date

1843–1847

Medium

Salted paper print from a paper negative

Department

Photographs

Institution

Getty Museum

> In the late 1700s and early 1800s Edinburgh became an important center for research into the treatment of mental illness, which in turn led to studies in psychiatry and phrenology. The latter discipline taught that the shape of a person's skull revealed his or her intelligence and character. George Combe (1788-1858) became a leading practitioner of this immensely popular nineteenth-century "science." In 1817 he traveled to Paris to study the phrenological hypothesis of Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828); in the 1820s he published *Elements of Phrenology* and *The Constitution of Man*. > > In a journal entry of November 5, 1842, Elizabeth Rigby (1809-93) (see [84.XP.460.7](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/39804/hill-adamson-miss-elizabeth-rigby-1844-1845/), [84.XO.734.4.3.9](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/99309/hill-adamson-miss-rigby-lady-eastlake-1843-1848/), [84.XM.445.21](https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/39621/hill-adamson-elizabeth-rigby-lady-eastlake-british-1843-1847/)) records meeting Combe at a dinner party, noting that he has "a good forehead in attestation of his intellect, and a hard face in betrayal of his morals." In this photograph he is seated at an angle, perhaps positioned by Hill and Adamson (David Octavius Hill [1802-70] and Robert Adamson [1821-48]) to highlight his cranial form. > > Anne M. Lyden. *Hill and Adamson*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1999), 54. ©1999, J. Paul Getty Museum.

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