Might recognize him as "Influence" from the Dick Tracy comics.

My first thought is that Mr. Cullen must be Hugh Laurie’s great-grandfather.

We can see one of the lights is very close. As a realist painter, I often used photos from the teens and early twenties of folks straining to not blink by holding their eyes un-naturally wide open as references. While this photo has him looking a bit weird, often it was attractive as the women especially, had a flow of tear gland fed liquid trying to keep their eyes from drying up giving them a dreamy expression. This fellow has a large head relative to his small frame as to look almost like it was Photo-Shopped on - - - almost. Very sharp focus - he never moved a muscle - - -

[The exposure time for this glass plate (not film) would have been a fraction of a second. - Dave]