Napoleon Sarony (1821-1896)

Gustave Adolphe Napoleon Sarony, known as Napoleon, may be a at least as famous or may be even more so than his older brother Oliver, but his connection to Scarborough is a small one. Like his brother he was born in Quebec in Canada. His father Adolphus (c.1790-1841), it is thought, had been a soldier at Waterloo before emigrating to Canada and worked as a clerk and merchant. Following the death of his mother, Marie (nee Lehoullier) he moved with his father to New York in the early-1830s. Much of the early life of the Sarony family is patchy at best. It is thought that from 1836 until 1842 he work as a lithographer for Nathaniel Currier. In about 1843 he he went into partnership with James (or Henry) Major forming the lithographic company of Sarony and Major. He married Ellen Major in the late 1840s, she was presumably related to his business partner. They had at least several children, including Ida (d. 1878, married to Thomas Dawes of Scarborough), Otto, Mary, Jennie (married to Samuel Waind Fisher of Scarborough) and Isabelle.

Ellen died in 1858 and Napoleon travelled to Europe. It is thought that in 1860 he spent sometime in Scarborough working at his brother’s studio. At the time Oliver Sarony was working both in Scarborough and in Belfast. Napoleon could have learnt everything that he needed to know to establish his own studio. Which he did in partnership with Hill and Thrupp in Birmingham in 1863. The business ran initially as Sarony, Hill and Thrupp and later as Sarony and Co until 1866 when Sarony sold everything to Thrupp and returned to New York.

Back in New York Sarony quickly opens a studio under the name of Sarony and Co in Broadway, initially in partnership with Alfred S. Campbell, who he had probably met in England. This partnership was lasted until about 1870-1872. Sarony and Co became famous for portraits of celebrities, especially authors and actors. He often paid for exclusive rights to photograph these famous people, whose portraits he would then sell by the thousand. One famous picture of Oscar Wilde taken on Wilde’s tour of America in 1883 was copied by the Burrow-Giles Lithographic company and wildly sold. Sarony sued for copyright infringement and one the case, establishing precedent in copyright law in relation to photographic images. Sarony ran the business until he died in 1896. The business continued, now run by his son Otto until he sold it to John F. Burrow in 1898.

During the time that Sarony was in Birmingham he employed or worked in partnership with a number of other photographers including Samuel William Hill, Robert White Thrupp (1821-1907), Nicholas Henneman (1813-1898, one time employee of Henry Fox Talbot) and Martin Laroche (1814-1886, sued by Henry Fox Talbot for infringement of his Calotype patent).

Sarony remarried after the death of his first wife, to Louise. they had no children together and she died in 1903.