Napoleon Sarony (March 9, 1821 – November 9, 1896) was an American

lithographer Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

and

photographer A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographe ...

. He was a highly popular

portrait A portrait is a portrait painting, painting, portrait photography, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, Personality type ...

photographer, best known for his portraits of the stars of late-19th-century American

theater Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actor, actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The p ...

. His son,

Otto Sarony Otto Sarony (1850–1903) was a portrait photographer and the owner of a celebrity photography business. Napoleon Sarony, the premier theatrical photographer of the 19th century, was his father.The Eternal Flapper by Jim Alessio, page 353 Sarony t ...

, continued the family business as a theater and film star photographer.

Life

Sarony was born in 1821 in

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

, then in the British colony of

Lower Canada The Province of Lower Canada (french: province du Bas-Canada) was a British colony on the lower Saint Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence (1791–1841). It covered the southern portion of the current Province of Quebec an ...

, and moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

around 1836. He worked as an illustrator for

Currier and Ives Currier and Ives was a New York City printmaking business that operated between 1835 and 1907. Founded by Nathaniel Currier, the company designed and sold inexpensive, hand painted lithographic works based on news events, views of popular cultu ...

before joining with James Major and starting his own lithography business, Sarony & Major, in 1843. In 1845, James Major was replaced in Sarony & Major by Henry B. Major, and the firm continued operating under that name until 1853. From 1853 to 1857, the firm was known as Sarony and Company, and from 1857 to 1867, as Sarony, Major & Knapp. Sarony left the firm in 1867 and established a photography studio at 37

Union Square Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

, during a time when celebrity portraiture was a popular fad. Photographers would pay their famous subjects to sit for them, and then retain full rights to sell the pictures. Sarony reportedly paid the internationally famous stage actress

Sarah Bernhardt Sarah Bernhardt (; born Henriette-Rosine Bernard; 22 or 23 October 1844 – 26 March 1923) was a French stage actress who starred in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including '' La Dame Aux Camel ...

$1,500 to pose for his camera, . In 1894, he published a portfolio of prints entitled "Sarony's Living Pictures".

Associations

Included among the thousands of people that came into Sarony's world were many distinguished people, such as American Civil War General

William T. Sherman William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

and literary figures

Samuel Clemens Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...

(Mark Twain),

Lew Wallace Lewis Wallace (April 10, 1827February 15, 1905) was an American lawyer, Union general in the American Civil War, governor of the New Mexico Territory, politician, diplomat, and author from Indiana. Among his novels and biographies, Wallace is ...

and

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...

. Sarony also took a photograph of the great American inventor

Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla ( ; ,"Tesla"
''

In 1888, Sarony photographed

, three years before he died in 1891. Sarony's photograph would be used as a model for the engraving of the first Sherman Postage stamp.Scott US Stamp catalogue, identifier.

Samuel Clemens; the Lotos, Salmagundi and Tile Clubs

Sarony took numerous photographs of

(Mark Twain). Clemens and Sarony were in the same social circles and shared many mutual acquaintances. They both belonged to the

Lotos Club The Lotos Club was founded in 1870 as a gentlemen's club in New York City; it has since also admitted women as members. Its founders were primarily a young group of writers and critics. Mark Twain, an early member, called it the "Ace of Clubs". ...

in New York City. Sarony helped in the founding of the

Salmagundi Club The Salmagundi Club, sometimes referred to as the Salmagundi Art Club, is a fine arts center founded in 1871 in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan, New York City. Since 1917, it has been located at 47 Fifth Avenue. , its membership roster ...

, an association of artists, and was also a member of the Tile Club, whose members included well-known authors and journalists. In 1883, English author

Wilkie Collins William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist and playwright known especially for ''The Woman in White (novel), The Woman in White'' (1859), a mystery novel and early "sensation novel", and for ''The Moons ...

dedicated his anti-

vivisection Vivisection () is surgery conducted for experimental purposes on a living organism, typically animals with a central nervous system, to view living internal structure. The word is, more broadly, used as a pejorative catch-all term for experiment ...

book ''Heart and Science'' to Sarony. In 1884, Sarony was a participant in an April Fool's joke played on Clemens when

George Washington Cable George Washington Cable (October 12, 1844 – January 31, 1925) was an American novelist notable for the realism of his portrayals of Creole life in his native New Orleans, Louisiana. He has been called "the most important southern artist wor ...

arranged for 150 of Clemens's friends to write to him simultaneously, requesting his autograph. As part of the joke, no stamps or envelopes were to be provided for a reply.

Oscar Wilde

One of Sarony's portraits of writer Oscar Wilde became the subject of a

U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

case, ''

Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony ''Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony'', List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 111, 111 United States Reports, U.S. 53 (1884), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States that upheld the power of United States Cong ...

'' 111 U.S. 53 (1884), in which the Court upheld the extension of

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...

protection to photographs. Sarony sued Burrow-Giles after it used unauthorized lithographs of ''Oscar Wilde No. 18'' in an advertisement, and won a judgment for $610 (the modern equivalent of just over $12,000) that was affirmed on

appeal In law, an appeal is the process in which cases are reviewed by a higher authority, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. Appeals function both as a process for error correction as well as a process of clarifying and ...

by the

Second Circuit Court of Appeals The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (in case citations, 2d Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. Its territory comprises the states of Connecticut, New York and Vermont. The court has appellate juri ...

and the Supreme Court. Sarony later photographed the Supreme Court itself, to celebrate the centennial of the federal judiciary in 1890.

Family

Sarony was married twice. His first wife died in 1858; his second, Louie, reportedly shared his tendency towards eccentricity and preference for outlandish dress. She rented elaborate costumes that she wore during her daily afternoon walk through Washington Square, wearing them once before returning them. His brother, Oliver François Xavier Sarony (1820–1879), was also a portrait photographer, working primarily in England, who died in 1879. Napoleon's son,

Otto Otto is a masculine German given name and a surname. It originates as an Old High German short form (variants ''Audo'', ''Odo'', ''Udo'') of Germanic names beginning in ''aud-'', an element meaning "wealth, prosperity". The name is recorded fro ...

(1850–1903), continued the family name for a few years until his own death in 1903. Sarony was buried in

Green-Wood Cemetery Green-Wood Cemetery is a cemetery in the western portion of Brooklyn, New York City. The cemetery is located between South Slope/ Greenwood Heights, Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Borough Park, Kensington, and Sunset Park, and lies several bl ...

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

Gallery

Image:Oscar Wilde - Sarony. LCCN98519697.jpg,

File:Joseph Jefferson as Ripvanwinkle by Napoleon SArony (1821-1896).jpg,

Joseph Jefferson Joseph Jefferson III, commonly known as Joe Jefferson (February 20, 1829 – April 23, 1905), was an American actor. He was the third actor of this name in a family of actors and managers, and one of the most famous 19th century American comedia ...

Rip Van Winkle "Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving, first published in 1819. It follows a Dutch-American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who meets mysterious Dutchmen, imbibes their liquor and falls aslee ...

, 1869 Image:Sarah Bernhardt-Sarony.jpeg, Actress

File:Harvard Theatre Collection - Sarah Bernhardt TCS 2 (Cleopatra) (cropped).jpg,

Cleopatra Cleopatra VII Philopator ( grc-gre, Κλεοπάτρα Φιλοπάτωρ}, "Cleopatra the father-beloved"; 69 BC10 August 30 BC) was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler.She was also a ...

, 1891 File:Tesla circa 1890.jpeg,

Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla ( ; ,"Tesla"
''

Thomas Moran Thomas Moran (February 12, 1837 – August 25, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York whose work often featured the Rocky Mountains. Moran and his family, wife Mary Nimmo Moran and daughter Ruth too ...

, ca. 1890-1896 Image:James Huneker by Sarony.jpg, photo of

James Huneker James Gibbons Huneker (January 31, 1857 – February 9, 1921) was an American art, book, music, and theater critic. A colorful individual and an ambitious writer, he was "an American with a great mission," in the words of his friend, the critic Be ...

c. 1890 File:The Banner (cropped).png, "Sarony's Centennial Tableaux", showing young woman making

U.S. Flag The national flag of the United States of America, often referred to as the ''American flag'' or the ''U.S. flag'', consists of thirteen equal horizontal stripes of red (top and bottom) alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the ca ...

on sewing machine, c1876 File:1882, Sarony, Napoleon, (Stephen) Grover Cleveland.jpg, ''(Stephen)

Grover Cleveland Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837June 24, 1908) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only president in American ...

'', 1882,

Princeton University Art Museum The Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) is the Princeton University gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. With a collecting history that began in 1755, the museum was formally established in 1882, and now houses over 113,000 works o ...

File:Jasper Francis Cropsey by Napoleon Sarony.jpg,

Jasper Francis Cropsey Jasper Francis Cropsey (February 18, 1823 – June 22, 1900) was an important American landscape artist of the Hudson River School. Early years Cropsey was born on his father Jacob Rezeau Cropsey's farm in Rossville on Staten Island, New Yor ...

, c. 1870

References

External links

A Biographical Chronology for ''Napoleon Sarony''

of ''Napoleon Sarony'' and his subject

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...

Portrait of Oliver Sarony (1820-1879)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sarony, Napoleon American portrait photographers 19th-century American printmakers Pre-Confederation Canadian emigrants to the United States 1821 births 1896 deaths Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery American lithographers 19th-century American photographers 19th-century lithographers 19th-century male artists