920
Association from 1861 to 1889 the formal role giving
him, a professional photographer, access to Royalty and
to London fashionable society and scientifi c community.
In 1873 he was created Photographer Royal to the Shah
of Persia following his visit to London.
In addition to his main business as a photographer
Melhuish formed partnerships with Thomas Miller
McLean and Robert Peters Napper trading as McLean,
Melhuish, Napper and Co at 26 Haymarket from 1859
until September 1861 when Napper left the fi rm; as
McLean, Melhuish & Co.; as McLean, Melhuish &
Haes, when Frank Haes joined in September 1861 until
March 1863 when Melhuish left. These fi rms seem to
have been both photographic studios, with coloured
photographs a speciality, and extensive publishers of
photographs.
Melhuish contributed photographs to various publica-
tions such as The Stereoscopic Magazine (1858–1865)
published by Lovell Reeve, the Howett’s Ruined Abbeys
and Castles of Great Britain (1862) and he also printed
the stereographs tipped-in to Piazzi Smyth’s Teneriffe
(1858) also published by Lovell Reeve. He exhibited
widely in a personal capacity and through his businesses
and was patronised by the Albert, Prince of Wales in the
later 1850s on several occasions.
Melhuish patented three signifi cant pieces photo-
graphic equipment. In 1854 (patent number 1139) he
designed, with Joseph Spencer, a photographic roll
holder using sensitised paper. This was described to
the Photographic Society in 1856, demonstrated to the
Prince of Wales and was used by Frank Haes when
he photographed at London zoo. In 1859 two patents
(numbers 2557 and 2965) related to the construction of
cameras in metal. This was the fi rst all-metal camera
and one extant example resides in the collection of the
National Museum of Photography, Film and Television
in Bradford. The Photographic News reported on the
camera in 1859.
Away from photography Melhuish started the Church
of England Pulpit and Ecclesiastical Review in 1873
and published articles on a diverse range of subjects
such as mental analysis, ghosts and the geology of the
bible. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Meteorologi-
cal Society and elected a Fellow of the Astronomical
Society in 1863.
He died in Brondesbury, London, on 1 November
1895 leaving an estate valued at £794.
Michael Pritchard
See also: Photographic News (1858–1908).
Further Reading
Henisch, B.A., and H.K., “A J Melhuish and the Shah,”’ in History
of Photography V(4) October 1980, 309–311.
MERLIN, HENRY BEAUFOY
(c. 1830–1873)
Australian
Henry Merlin is thought to have arrived in Sydney in
December 1848 but may have been a newspaper reporter
in Norfolk in 1851 who arrived in Australia in 1853.
Speculation exists as to his prior and subsequent activi-
ties. In 1863 Merlin married in London and possibly
learnt photography for in 1864 he was established as a
travelling photographer in South Victoria and Victoria
and by 1866 was trading as the American and Austral-
asian Photographic Company (A.&A.Co). Such Ameri-
can references in brand names were popular in the gold
rush era. Merlin employed an assistant, Charles Bayliss
(1850–97) and together they set out to photograph house
to house throughout Victoria and New South Wales. The
pair worked their way north inland to Sydney where the
studio was located from 1870.
In March 1872, the Merlin followed the gold rush to
Hill End west of Sydney where he met the enriched Ger-
man-born immigrant miner Bernard Otto Holtermann.
The latter appointed Merlin offi cial photographer for
the Holtermann International Travelling Exposition,
a massive photographic documentation of the colony,
later shown at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial exhi-
bition. Merlin’s involvement however, was cut short
by his premature death in Sydney in September 1873.
The main work fell to Bayliss. Merlin also excelled in
journalism with many articles appearing in the Town &
Country Journal.
A large collection of A&A Co negatives is held in the
State Library of New South Wales but surviving prints
are mostly cartes de visites, often faded.
Gael Newton
MESTRAL, AUGUSTE (1812–1884)
French photographer
Until very recently, practically no biographical informa-
tion was available on this photographer, who was active
in France in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Even his
fi rst name was veiled in mystery. The initial O, which
has frequently been mentioned since the 1970s, seemed
not to appear in a single nineteenth-century document.
Research carried out in the context of two major 2002
exhibitions—on the Mission héliographique and on
Gustave Le Gray, with whom Mestral was befriended
and collaborated—resulted in a rudimentary insight
into his life. It seems that he was born in 1812 in the
Jura region, that he adopted the family name of his
mother’s former husband and that he became a clerk
after having studied law. He established himself in
Paris in 1844 and from 1848 onwards he was reputed
MELHUISH, ARTHUR JAMES
