12 Facts About Napoleon Sarony

Napoleon Sarony was an American lithographer and photographer.

Napoleon Sarony was a highly popular portrait photographer, best known for his portraits of the stars of late-19th-century American theater.

Napoleon Sarony left the firm in 1858 and traveled abroad for the next eight years.

Napoleon Sarony established his own first portrait studio at 66 New Street in Birmingham, England around 1865.

In 1888, Sarony photographed William T Sherman, three years before he died in 1891.

Clemens and Napoleon Sarony were in the same social circles and shared many acquaintances.

Napoleon Sarony helped in the founding of the Salmagundi Club, an association of artists, and was a member of the Tile Club, whose members included well-known artists and journalists.

In 1884, Napoleon Sarony was a participant in an April Fool's joke played on Clemens when George Washington Cable arranged for 150 of Clemens's friends to write to him simultaneously, requesting his autograph.

Napoleon Sarony sued Burrow-Giles after it used unauthorized lithographs of Oscar Wilde No 18 in an advertisement, and won a judgment for $610 that was affirmed on appeal by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court.

Napoleon Sarony later photographed the Supreme Court itself, to celebrate the centennial of the federal judiciary in 1890.

Napoleon Sarony rented elaborate costumes that she wore during her daily afternoon walk through Washington Square, wearing them once before returning them.

Napoleon Sarony's brother, Oliver Francois Xavier Sarony, was a portrait photographer, working primarily in England, who died in 1879.