Eliphalet M. Brown Jr. (1816 - January 24, 1886) was an American daguerreotypist, lithographer, and photographer. He was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts. By 1837, he was working as an artist and lithographer in New York. His name appears on the records of Currier and Ives, among other firms. In 1841 he exhibited at the National Academy of Design, New York. Brown arranged for his younger brother, James Sydney Brown to find a position in the innovative new field of daguerreotype photography. He apprenticed in a gallery owned by Matthew Brady. Both brothers were so impressed with photography that, in 1846, they jointly started a studio, The American Gallery. According to one reference, Eliphalet was an expert lithographer, while James focused on photography. Between 1848 and 1851, Eliphalet left the partnership with his brother and worked with Charles Severyn and, then Currier and Ives. Around this time, he was famously selected to accompany the 1852 - 1854 diplomatic mission to Japan led by Commodore Matthew C. Perry - it is a curiosity of history that Eliphalet, the lithographer, not his brother James, the photographer, was chosen by Perry (who knew them both) as the official expedition photographer. Along the way he took over 400 historical photographs recording the first significant contact between Americans and Tokugawa Japanese. Unfortunately, 6 of these images were lost to an April 11, 1856 fire at a Peter S. Duval Lithography Company in Philadelphia, but contrary to some irresponsible scholarship, most survived. Despite this fact, few are known in institutional and private collections, the remainder presumably consigned to a government archive and simply lost. Others were copied by the artist Wilhelm Heine, who painted them and in partnership with Brown, transferred them to lithographic prints. When Brown returned from Japan, he gave up photography for the Navy Life. He served as a Master and Ensign during the American Civil War. Later he was assigned to the Mediterranean. Brown retired from naval life in 1875, at which time he married and lived quietly until his death in 1886. More by this mapmaker...

Peter Bernard Wilhelm Heine (January 30, 1827 - October 5, 1885) was a German-American artist, traveler, writier, and military officer. Heine was born in Dresden, the son of a comedic actor at the Dresden Court Theater with family connection to Richard Wagner. He studied art at the Dresden Royal Academy of Art, and later apprenticed under the Dresden historical painter Julius Hübner (1806 - 1882). He studied for an additional three years in Paris before returning to Dresden. There he participated in the May Uprising in Dresden, part of the German Revolutions of 1848-49, the suppression of which forced to him into exile - apparently with the help of Alexander von Humnboldt (1769 -1859). Like many 'Forty-Eighters,' Heine settled in New York, setting up an art studio at 515 Broadway. He quickly gained a reputation as a fine artist and befriended the archeologist and diplomat, Ephraim George Squier (1821 - 1888), who hired him as staff artist for his expedition to Central America. The work earned him renown in Washington, where he was assigned to accompany Commodore Matthew Perry (1894 - 1858) on his expedition to Japan (1852 - 1853), where he served as Acting Master's Mate on the flagship USS Mississippi under Sydney Smith Lee (1802 -1869). The sketches he produced of the places he visited and the people he encountered there, together with the daguerreotypes taken by his colleague Eliphalet Brown Jr., formed the basis of an official iconography of the American expedition to Japan which remains an important record of the country as it was before the foreigners arrived in force. Upon his return to New York in 1855 he published several books: a collection of prints entitled Graphic Scenes of the Japan Expedition; 400 sketches which were included in Perry's official report; and his memoirs, Reiss um die Welt nach Japan (Leipzig, 1856). The memoirs were very successful, and were immediately translated into both French and Dutch. Heine returned to Japan in 1860 on the Prussian financed Eulenburg Expedition (1859 - 1862) under Friedrich Albrecht zu Eulenburg (1815 - 1881). With the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861 - 1865), Heine returned to the United States where he volunteered for the Union Army, joining the 1st Maryland Infantry. Shortly thereafter he was commissioned as a Captain of the Topographical Engineers. He was captured during the Peninsular Campaign and served time in the infamous Libby Prison in Confederate Richmond. He was discharged from military service due to injuries, but in 1863 rejoined the army as Colonel of the German-American 103rd New York Infantry. In 1865 he was made a Brevet Brigadier General but was accused of disobedience and left the army. In the next year he became a clerk to the Paris and Liverpool consulates. After the establishment of the Hohenzollern Empire in Germany in 1871, he returned to Dresden where he wrote his last book about Japan, Japan, Beiträge zur Kenntnis des Landes und seiner Bewohner (Berlin, 1873 - 1880). He died in Dresden in 1885. Learn More...

Napoleon Sarony (March 9, 1821 - November 9, 1896) was a dashingly handsome Canadian-American lithographer and publisher active in New York in the mid to late 19th century. Sarony was born in Quebec and emigrated to New York City in 1835. He apprenticed under Henry Robinson (fl. 1830/33 - 1850) before working as a lithograph artist for Nathaniel Currier (1813 - 1888). In 1846, he partnered with Currier's apprentice lithographer Henry B. Major to establish the firm of 'Sarony and Major.' From offices at 117 Futon Street, they published under this imprint until roughly 1853, when Sarony split off on his own under the imprint 'Sarony and Co.', still at 117 Fulton. At the time 'and Co.' probably meant Joseph Fairchild Knapp (1832 - 1891), Sarony's apprentice, and Richard C. Major, possibly Henry Major's son. In 1857, a new imprint was established as 'Sarony, Major and Knapp'. According to an advertisement in the New York Times (Feb 16, 1864), Sarony had invested in the business at founding, but was not an active partner, possibly because he was traveling in Europe. It is unclear why Sarony's name was maintained, possibly to capitalize on his fame, as a honorific, or possibly because he owned a major stake. They published under this imprint until 1863, becoming a major concern at 449 Broadway. Sarony's name was formally removed from the partnership in 1863. At the time he was traveling in Europe, mastering the most advanced color lithography and photographic techniques. He is known to have worked in France, Germany, and England. He returned to New York in the 1860s, establishing a photography company at 37 Union Square that became famous for its portraits of late-19th-century American theater icons. In 1891, Sarony, hoping to capitalize on Sarah Bernhardt's fame as 'Cleopatra', paid the stage actress 1,500 USD to sit for a photo session, the modern-day equivalent of 20,000 USD - suggesting a highly prosperous business. His son, Otto Sarony (1850–1903), continued the family business as a theater and film star photographer. As an aside, Sarony's second wife, Louie Sarony, was a known eccentric who would reportedly dress in elaborate rented costumes to walk around Washington Square each afternoon. Learn More...