Cleaner is a relative thing... 
In this case the only way to do the job (at present) with a modicum of hygiene is to employ a macro.
The write-text macro is the cleaner of the two, since the clipboard history window is unchanged when the macro is run.
Unfortunately the only way to acquire an image for writing is to copy it to the system clipboard, and that act moves the position of the image in the history to the top – which also moves the selection in the window.
@peternlewis...
I'm a little surprised that System Events doesn't list the clipboard items by index.
Therefore I can't say “get index of first item whose selected is true”.
If I could do that I could restore the position of the selection after copying the image.
Unfortunately I'm not sure there's anything you can do to change that without altering the UI or making the history window scriptable...