Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry. Artist: Mathew B. Brady (American, born Ireland, 1823-1896 New York). Dimensions: Image : 33.1 x 28.4cm (13 1/16 x 11 3/16in.)Mount: 18 1/8 in. × 14 in. (46 × 35.5 cm). Date: 1856-58.Mathew Brady was a skilled daguerreotypist, having learned the technical aspects of the process from the American pioneers of the medium, Samuel Morse and John Draper. Other qualities, however, set him apart from competing daguerreotypists who operated in New York in 1844, the year that Brady opened his first studio: artistry in his sense of lighting and in the way he posed his sitters; a personal manner that set his clientele at ease in sumptuously appointed quarters; and a frankly elitist conception of both the business and the social mission of this most democratic medium.Early on Brady set himself the task of photographing the nation's leading figures--presidents and military men, business leaders and stars of the stage, writers and artists. Each daguerreotype of a ma