— Ch. 1 · Irish Roots And Daguerreotype —
Mathew Brady.
~5 min read · Ch. 1 of 6
Mathew B. Brady was born between 1822 and 1824 in Warren County, New York, near Lake George. He was the youngest of three children to Irish immigrant parents named Andrew and Samantha Julia Brady. Official documents from before and during the American Civil War claimed he was born in Ireland. At age sixteen, Brady moved to Saratoga, New York. There he met portrait painter William Page and became his student. In 1839, the two traveled to Albany and then to New York City. Brady continued to study painting with Page and with Samuel Morse. Morse had met Louis Jacques Daguerre in France in 1839. He returned to the US to push the new daguerreotype invention. Brady first made leather cases that held daguerreotypes. Soon he became the center of the New York artistic colony. Morse opened a studio and offered classes. Brady paid fifty dollars tuition by working as a clerk for department store tycoon Alexander Turney Stewart.
Presidential Portraits Gallery
In 1844, Brady opened his own photography studio at the corner of Broadway and Fulton Street in New York. By 1845, he began to exhibit portraits of famous Americans. These included Senator Daniel Webster and writer Edgar Allan Poe. In 1850, Brady produced The Gallery of Illustrious Americans. This album featured images like the elderly Andrew Jackson at the Hermitage. The collection did not make money but invited attention to his work. In 1856, Brady placed an ad in the New York Herald offering photographs, ambrotypes, and daguerreotypes. This inventive ad pioneered the use of distinct typeface in American advertising. In 1854, Parisian photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri popularized the carte de visite. These small pictures rapidly became a popular novelty. Thousands were created and sold in the United States and Europe. Brady photographed eighteen of the nineteen American presidents from John Quincy Adams to William McKinley. He captured Abraham Lincoln on many occasions. His Lincoln photos later appeared on the five-dollar bill and the Lincoln cent.