1867 Howard Lithograph View of Union Civil War Heroes

Hansen 'Ole Peter' Balling (April 13, 1823 - May 1, 1906) was a Norwegian painter active in the United States in the second half of the 19th century. Balling was born in Christiania, Norway. He studied painting in the early 1850s at the Copenhagen Academy. During the First Schleswig War (1848 - 1850) he served as a Danish officer. It was during this war that he developed an interest in illustrating battles and military scenes. After the war, from 1854 to 1855, he studied Couture in Paris. He emigrated to the United States in 1856, settling in New York, where he worked as a portraitist and photographer. With the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861 - 1865), he volunteered for service and was commissioned as a captain with the Scandinavian Volunteers. During the course of the War, he was raised in rank to lieutenant Colonel. Throughout the war, he consistently sketched images of the figures he encountered - including most or the Union leadership. After the war he compiled these into a grand painting of General Ulysses S. Grant and his 26 generals entitled, 'The Heroes of the Republic'. The piece was well received when presented in 1865-66 and is today enshrined at the National Portrait Gallery. From 1881 to 1890 he relocated to Mexico where his renown as an artist earned him major private and government commissions. Around 1890, he repatriated to Norway, serving as the Mexican consul in Oslo. Just before his 1806 death he published a biography Memoirs of a Long Life. More by this mapmaker...

Ferdinand Mayer (October 19, 1817 - November 14, 1879) was a prosperous lithographer based in New York during the latter part of the 19th century. Mayer was born in Württemberg, Germany, but emigrated to the United States following the 1848 March Revolutions that swept through the German Confederation - maybe as late as 1854. Initially, Mayer was associated with various partners, including Prang, Nagel, and Korff - also German immigrants. By 1855, he established himself at 96 Fulton Street and, within a few years, expanded to the neighboring property at 98 Fulton Street. Meyer produced an enormous corpus of varied work, including music sheets, bank notes, broadsides, maps, and views. His career was probably jumpstarted through an early partnership with the important cartographer Henry Walling, many of whose maps and atlases bear the 'Ferd. Mayer' imprint. His most important publication is most likely Egbert L. Vielé's 1865 Topographical Map of the City of New York, one of the most important and influential maps of New York City ever published. The Mayer imprint appears on documents as, variously, 'Ferd. Meyer', 'F. Mayer', and 'Mayer and Sons'. Learn More...