Mathew Brady (American, 1823–1896)
b. 1823 — d. 1896
Mathew Brady American, 1823 - 1896 Mathew B. Brady was born in Lake George, New York, where he received instruction in art from itinerant painter William Page. He is said to have been introduced to daguerreotyping by Samuel F. B. Morse, the American portraitist and inventor, who was a friend of Page and an early advocate of photography. Brady is believed to have also studied with John W. Draper, another important American daguerrean pioneer. While Brady is best known today for his Civil War work, he was also among the most successful portraitists of his time. He first opened a studio in New York City in 1844, then a Washington studio in 1847, and two others in New York in 1853 and 1860. Ever aware of history and celebrity, as early as 1845 he conceived an ambitious series of published portraits to be called The Gallery of Illustrious Americans. The lithographed images, derived from Brady's daguerreotypes and accompanied by explanatory texts, drew attention and acclaim, and initiated his association with celebrated sitters. The series, however, failed to receive adequate backing for completion. Like many commercial photographers, Brady employed "operators" -- technicians and artists who worked with him and often took his pictures. Brady and other photographic entrepreneurs took responsibility for overseeing their studios, marketing prints, and devoting themselves to their most important clients and images. It was Brady's innovation, at the outbreak of the Civil War, to outfit and send a number of talented operators into the field. The thousands of negatives produced of the war's great generals and battlefields by Brady's firm are thus usually not the work of the famed photographer himself, but rather that of George S. Cook, Alexander Gardner, Levin Handy, Michael Miley, and Timothy O'Sullivan. Nevertheless, Brady played a key role in envisioning and executing the immense enterprise of photographing the Civil War. For example, he produced a number of portraits of Abraham Lincoln, who avowed that without Brady to present him to the American public, he would have had considerably greater difficulty becoming known. T.W.F.
