Napoleon Sarony
Napoleon Sarony (* around 1821 in Quebec; † November 9, 1896 in New York City ) was an American photographer, draftsman and lithographer.
Life
Napoleon Sarony was a son of a Birmingham emigrated to Canada lithographer. He had seven siblings and lost around the age of ten years his mother. In the 1830s he came to New York, where he worked as a lithographer at Henry R. Robinson and Nathaniel Currier. Later, he and Henry B. Major own business. In 1846 he married Ellen Major, probably a sister of his business partner. In 1850 he lived with his family, which included at that time the two young children Ida († 1878) and Otto Sarony, at the Henry B. Major.
1857 joined Joseph F. Knapp is Sarony and Major; the company was now called Sarony, Major & Knapp Lithography Company. Later, it developed the American Lithographic Company.
In January 1858 Ellen Sarony died. Napoleon Sarony moved then with his children to Europe. He studied art in Berlin, Paris and London. In Scarborough, he visited his brother Olivier, who was very successful as a portrait photographer, and decided to also pursue this career. After the end of the Civil War he returned therefore back to the USA. In 1865 he opened his first photo studio on Broadway in the house No. 630 Later, the studio moved to the number 680.
Napoleon Sarony early recognized the opportunities offered to the market for images of famous and well-known personalities him and focused on. He paid celebrities and famous people to be allowed to photograph them and then sell the images. He usually wrote these people directly and invited them to photo sessions, such as in 1871, Mark Twain. In the same year he moved his photo studio on Union Square. At number 37, it took several floors; for his reception room on the fifth floor came the visitors with an elevator. His pictures in which he arranged each a personal environment for its objects and photographed them with typical possible facial expressions and gestures, made him famous. Of 1883/84 he went into the history of the copyright, as he emerged from the process with the Burrow - Giles Lithographic Company to the rights to a photographic portrait of Oscar Wilde as a winner.
Sarony was a member of various clubs, where artists and writers moved. Francis Hopkinson Smith designed the figure of Julius Bianchi in The Fortunes of Oliver Horn by Sarony, Wilkie Collins dedicated his book Heart and Science. Mark Twain was the sculptor Karl Gerhardt produce a work of art that showed himself and George Washington Cable. Gerhardt used for possibly a Sarony photograph. Twain himself was a widespread portrait that had taken Sarony, rather unhappy, and compared it with the photograph of a clothed gorillas. He failed to be suppressed this file. 1913 was taken as the basis for a promotional image for a brand of cigarettes and the slogan - provided "Known to Everyone Liked by All."
In April 1896 Sarony moved his photography studio one last time and sold at this move a large part of the equipment to an Egyptian mummy. Maybe he was then in financial difficulties. For about 1000 pieces of equipment he received approximately $ 5,000. He moved the studio into the Fifth Avenue in the house No. 256 He had his residence in street 126 West Forty -seventh. He died a few months after moving his studio. He was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
He left his son Otto, and two daughters from his first marriage, Mary Fry in London and Jennie Fisher. A daughter Isabelle, who in 1885 had married Joseph Bonanno, came probably from Saronys second wife Louise, but was probably born premarital and probably died before Saronys death.
Napoleon Sarony should have photographed some 30 000 200 000 celebrities and some well-known personalities. It is believed that he was making up to 500 000 recordings in his life.
Otto Sarony, who had become known as Compagnon his father and as a sailor, the photo studio together with the names sold on October 7, 1898 John F. Burrow - possibly the same Burrow, who had once been involved in the copyright process. After Otto Sarony had the right to use the name of Sarony, sold to Theodore Marceau, he, however, turned himself into trouble. Otto Sarony died in 1903 and left a son named Arthur Yale Sarony. The legal dispute over the name Sarony was until 1908 ruled in favor Burrows.
Napoleon Saronys widow Louise married in 1897 Domenico Bonanno. She died a few months before Otto Sarony. The whereabouts of some 500 000 glass negatives from Napoleon Saronys estate after the death of Louise Bonanno is unclear. Saronys works are in many museums in the United States and the Musée d' Orsay in Paris and the National Portrait Gallery in London.