Mathew Brady
Mathew Brady in 1875
Born	ca. 1822 Warren County, New York, US
Died	January 15, 1896(1896-01-15) New York City, New York
Occupation	Photographer, photojournalist
Nationality	American
Spouse(s)	Juliette Handy Brady
Signature

Note: Mathew B. Brady's name contains a single "t". For persons named Matthew Brady, see Matthew Brady (disambiguation).

Mathew B. Brady (ca. 1822 – January 15, 1896) was one of the most celebrated 19th century American photographers, best known for his portraits of celebrities and his documentation of the American Civil War. He is credited with being the father of photojournalism.^[1]

Early years[link]

Brady was born in Warren County, New York, the youngest of three children^[2] of Irish immigrant parents, Andrew and Julia Brady. At age 16 he moved to Saratoga, New York, where he met famed portrait painter William Page. Brady became Page's student. In 1839 the two traveled to Albany, New York, and then to New York City, where Brady continued to study painting with Page, and also with Page's former teacher, Samuel F. B. Morse.^[3] Morse had met Louis Jacques Daguerre in France in 1839, and returned to the US to enthusiastically push the new daguerrotype invention of capturing images. He soon became the center of the New York artistic colony who wished to study photography. He opened a studio and offered classes; Brady was one of the first students.^[4] In 1844 Brady opened his own photography studio in New York, and by 1845 he began to exhibit his portraits of famous Americans. He opened a studio in Washington, D.C. in 1849, where he met Juliet (whom everybody called 'Julia') Handy, whom he married in 1851.^[5] Brady's early images were daguerreotypes, and he won many awards for his work; in the 1850s ambrotype photography became popular, which gave way to the albumen print, a paper photograph produced from large glass negatives most commonly used in the American Civil War photography. In 1850 Brady produced The Gallery of Illustrious Americans, a portrait collection of prominent contemporary figures. The album, which featured noteworthy images including the elderly Andrew Jackson at the Hermitage, was not financially rewarding but invited increased attention to Brady’s work and artistry.^[3] In 1854, Parisian photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri popularized the carte de visite and these small pictures (the size of a visiting card) rapidly became a popular novelty as thousands of these images were created and sold in the United States and Europe.

In 1856 Brady created the first modern advertisement when he placed an ad in the New York Herald paper offering to produce "photographs, ambrotypes and daguerreotypes."^[6] His ads were the first whose typeface and fonts were distinct from the text of the publication and from that of other advertisements.^[7]

Civil War documentation[link]

Mathew Brady (wearing straw hat), with General Ambrose Burnside (reading newspaper), taken while Burnside was in command of the Army of the Potomac, early in 1863, after his ill-fated attack on Fredericksburg

At first, the effect of the Civil War on Brady's business was a brisk increase in sales of cartes de visite to transient soldiers. However, he was soon taken with the idea of documenting the war itself. He first applied for permission to travel to the battle sites to an old friend, General Winfield Scott, and eventually he made his application to President Lincoln himself. Lincoln granted permission in 1861 with the proviso that Brady finance the project himself.^[8] His efforts to document the American Civil War on a grand scale by bringing his photographic studio right onto the battlefields earned Brady his place in history. Despite the obvious dangers, financial risk, and discouragement of his friends, Brady is later quoted as saying "I had to go. A spirit in my feet said 'Go,' and I went." His first popular photographs of the conflict were at the First Battle of Bull Run, in which he got so close to the action that he barely avoided capture.

Mathew Brady upon his return from the First Battle of Bull Run, wearing a saber given to him for defense by New York Fire Zouaves^[9]

Brady, just before his death

Grave of Mathew Brady

He employed Alexander Gardner, James Gardner, Timothy H. O'Sullivan, William Pywell, George N. Barnard, Thomas C. Roche, and seventeen other men, each of whom was given a traveling darkroom, to go out and photograph scenes from the Civil War. Brady generally stayed in Washington, D.C., organizing his assistants and rarely visited battlefields personally. This may have been due, at least in part, to the fact that Brady's eyesight had begun to deteriorate in the 1850s.

In October 1862 Brady opened an exhibition of photographs from the Battle of Antietam in his New York gallery titled "The Dead of Antietam." Many images in this presentation were graphic photographs of corpses, a presentation new to America. This was the first time that many Americans saw the realities of war in photographs as distinct from previous "artists' impressions".

Following the conflict a war-weary public lost interest in seeing photos of the war, and Brady’s popularity and practice declined drastically.

Later years and death[link]

During the war, Brady spent over $100,000 to create over 10,000 plates. He expected the U.S. government to buy the photographs when the war ended, but when the government refused to do so he was forced to sell his New York City studio and go into bankruptcy. Congress granted Brady $25,000 in 1875, but he remained deeply in debt. Depressed by his financial situation, loss of eyesight and devastated by the death of his wife in 1887, he became very lonely. He died penniless in the charity ward of Presbyterian Hospital in New York City on January 15, 1896, from complications following a streetcar accident.

Brady's funeral was financed by veterans of the 7th New York Infantry. He was buried in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

Levin Corbin Handy, Brady's nephew by marriage, took over Brady's photography business after his death.

Legacy and people photographed[link]

Photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken by Brady on February 27, 1860 in New York City, the day of Lincoln's Cooper Union speech

Abraham Lincoln, Issue of 1869. The image of this postage issue of 1869 was modeled after a photo taken by Mathew Brady.

Mid-19th century "Brady stand" photo model's armrest table

Brady photographed 18 of the 19 American Presidents from John Quincy Adams to William McKinley. The exception was the 9th President, William Henry Harrison, who died in office three years before Brady started his Photographic Collection.

The thousands of photographs which Mathew Brady took have become the most important visual documentation of the Civil War, and have helped historians better understand the era.

Brady photographed and made portraits of many senior Union officers in the war, including Ulysses S. Grant, Nathaniel Banks, Don Carlos Buell, Ambrose Burnside, Benjamin Butler, Joshua Chamberlain, George Custer, David Farragut, John Gibbon, Winfield Hancock, Samuel P. Heintzelman, Joseph Hooker, Oliver Howard, David Hunter, John A. Logan, Irvin McDowell, George McClellan, James McPherson, George Meade, Montgomery C. Meigs, David Dixon Porter, William Rosecrans, John Schofield, William Sherman, Daniel Sickles, Henry Warner Slocum, George Stoneman, Edwin V. Sumner, George Thomas, Emory Upton, James Wadsworth, and Lew Wallace.

On the Confederate side, Brady photographed Jefferson Davis, P. G. T. Beauregard, Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, Lord Lyons, James Henry Hammond, and Robert E. Lee (Lee's first session with Brady was in 1845 as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, his final after the war in Richmond, Virginia).

Brady photographed Abraham Lincoln on many occasions. His Lincoln photographs have been used for the $5 dollar bill and the Lincoln penny. One of his Lincoln photos was used by the National Bank Note Company as a model for the engraving on the 90c Lincoln Postage issue of 1869.^[10]

Brady can be considered a pioneer in the orchestration of a "corporate credit line." In this practice, every image produced in his gallery was labeled “Photo by Brady;” however, Brady dealt directly with only the most distinguished subjects and most portrait sessions were carried out by others.^[11]

As perhaps the best-known US photographer in the 19th century, it was Brady's name that came to be attached to the era's heavy specialized end tables which were factory-made specifically for use by portrait photographers. Such a "Brady stand" of the mid-19th century typically had a weighty cast iron base for stability, plus an adjustable-height single-column pipe leg for dual use as either a portrait model's armrest or (when fully extended and fitted with a brace attachment rather than the usual tabletop) as a neckrest. The latter was often needed to keep models steady during the longer exposure times of early photography. While Brady stand is a convenient term for these trade-specific articles of studio equipment, there is no proven connection between Brady himself and the Brady stand's invention circa 1855.^[12]

Brady produced over seven thousand pictures (mostly two negatives of each). One set "after undergoing extraordinary vicissitudes," came into U.S. government possession. His own negatives passed in the 1870s to E. & H.T. Anthony, of New York, in default of payment for photographic supplies. They "were kicked about from pillar to post" for ten years, until John C. Taylor found them in an attic and bought them; from this they became "the backbone of the Ordway-Rand collection; and in 1895 Brady himself had no idea of what had become of them. Many were broken, lost, or destroyed by fire. After passing to various other owners, they were discovered and appreciated by Edward Bailey Eaton," who set in motion "events that led to their importance as the nucleus of a collection of Civil War photos published in 1912 as The Photographic History of the Civil War.^[13]

Some of the lost images are mentioned in the last episode of Ken Burns' 1990 documentary on the Civil War. Burns claims that glass plate negatives were often sold to gardeners, not for their images, but for the glass itself to be used in greenhouses and cold frames. In the years that followed the end of the war, the sun slowly burned away their filmy images and they were lost.^[14]

Civil War photos[link]

Soldier guarding arsenal Washington, D.C., 1862

Mathew Brady took thousands of photos of American Civil War scenes. Much of what is known today about the Civil War comes from these photos. There are thousands of photos in the National Archives taken by Brady and his associates, Alexander Gardner, George Barnard, and Timothy O'Sullivan. The photographs include Lincoln, Grant, and common soldiers in camps and battlefields. The images provide a pictorial cross reference of American Civil War history. Brady was not able to photograph actual battle scenes as the photographic equipment in those days was still in the infancy of its development and required that a subject be still in order for a clear photo to be produced.^[15]

See also[link]

• George S. Cook  — his Southern counterpart
• Photographers of the American Civil War

References[link]

• Panzer, Mary (1997). Mathew Brady and the Image of History. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books. ISBN 1-58834-143-7.  LCC TR140.B7 P36 1997

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mathew Brady

• MathewBrady.com
• Mathew Brady biography at American Memory of the Library of Congress
  • Selected Civil War photographs by Brady and his contemporaries at American Memory
• Mathew Brady Photographs More than 6,000 photographs available in the Archival Research Catalog of the National Archives and Records Administration
• Mathew Brady's World – biography, timeline and analysis of Brady's work at the Smithsonian Institution
  • Mathew Brady's portraits at the National Portrait Gallery
• "Mathew Brady". Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=128. Retrieved 2009-05-13. 
• Mathew Brady's Civil War Landscapes – slideshow by Life magazine

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2009)

Matthew Brady (1799 – 4 May 1826) was a notorious bushranger in Van Diemen's Land (now known as Tasmania) in the early 19th century. he was sometimes known as the "Gentleman Bushranger" due to his good treatment and fine manners when robbing his victims. Matthew Brady, but whose proper name was Bready, was born at Manchester, just about the close of 18th century. His occupation in England was that of a gentleman's servant, probably a groom, as he was an excellent and even a graceful rider, and perfect in his horsemanship. He was tried at Lancaster, on the 17 April 1820, and received a seven-year sentence of transportation, and arrived in Australia in the convict ship Juliana, on the 29 December 1820.^[1] He rebelled against the conditions in Sydney and was sent to the notorious penal settlement at Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbor.

Although classified as an incorrigible and dangerous criminal, in 1824 he escaped from Sarah Island with 13 others, and went on a crime spree at various homesteads and villages throughout Tasmania.

Brady considered himself a gentleman, who never robbed or insulted women. The military considered him a dangerous bushranger. After Brady's gang held up Sorell and captured the local garrison (in which the garrison commander, Lieut. William Gunn was shot in the arm, which was subsequently amputated), Lieut. Governor Arthur posted rewards for the capture of Brady and his gang.

In return, Brady posted a reward of "Twenty gallons of rum" to any person who would deliver Governor Arthur to him.

After 21 months free in Van Diemen's Land, Brady and his gang captured a boat, intending to sail it to the Australian mainland. Due to bad weather crossing Bass Strait, they were forced to turn back.

Eventually, one of his gang members, an ex-convict name Cowan, betrayed him for a pardon. Brady escaped the ensuing gun battle with serious injuries, but was captured soon after by the famous bounty hunter John Batman.

Brady was hanged on 4 May 1826, at the old Hobart gaol. Four other bushrangers were hanged with him, including Thomas Jeffries the cannibal. Brady complained bitterly at being hanged alongside Jeffries, who was, as Brady pointed out, an informer as well as a cannibal and mass murderer. Brady's cell had been filled with flowers from the ladies of Hobart Town, which tends to support his claim to be a "Gentleman Bushranger".

References[link]

• Tom Prior, Bill Wannan, and Harry Nunn (1968). A Pictorial History of Bushrangers. Melbourne: Paul Hamlyn.