A character in the comedy of manners play The School for Scandal, LitCharts describes Charles Surface as: “A warmhearted but hard-partying man, the younger Surface brother is known around town for his extravagance. Charles has spent all of the massive fortune he was given by his uncle Sir Oliver and is in huge quantities of debt, but he is presented as essentially moral and good at heart. Because of his qualities of loyalty, kindness, and unpretentiousness, it’s suggested that he will eventually mend his ways and grow into a respectable representative of the Surface family. Charles is in love with Maria, and ultimately becomes her fiancé and the heir to Sir Oliver Surface.”

The following commentary appeared on the index page for this portrait: “Mr. Drew was born in Philadelphia, Penn, Nov. 13th, 1854. He came of a theatrical family. His father was a fine actor, and his mother is to day, in her line, without a peer. He made his first appearance at the Arch Street Theatre, Philadelphia, March 22d, 1873, Plumper in the farce of “Cool as a Cucumber.” Two years later he joined Daly’s Company, playing Bob Ruggles in the “Big Bonanza.” In 1875 he left the Fifth Avenue Theatre and travelled for two years, returning to Daly’s in 1879. In the past 13 years, as leading man, he has played every phase of character in eccentric and high Comedy, in which parts he is without an equal at present on the stage. In England and in Paris he was given the very highest praise by the best known dramatic critics, in fact, the company of which he was the leading man, had a season of triumphs crowded on triumphs.

On his return home, the company opened on November 25th, 1891, with “The Taming of the Shrew.” The N. Y. SUN the next morning printed the following: “Miss Rehan was bound to hold her supremacy as the goddess of Daley worshippers and it seemed as though her former brilliance as the admirable shrew was appreciably increased. Mr. Drew, it was much more palpable, had made up his mind to accumulate fresh laurels to carry away on his secession from this theatre. Hi impersonation of the shrew tamer was bettered by an increase of fluency, a brodening of conception, and an utter freedom from imposed constraint. It was as though he had defintly unshackled himself, and was using his liberty for a might effort to triumph. He was triumphant, too. Petruchio not only dominated Katharine according to the Shakespearean design, but for the first time Mr. Drew contested for and gained equal conspicuousness with Miss Rehan before a Daly audience. A full half of the laughter and applause was given to him, and, while a majority of the audience only realized that the actor was out-doing his repressed self, the minority observed with amused interest what they knew was a remarkable contest in acting.”

In writing a sketch of Mr. Drew Mr. H. C. Bonner said: “It seems to me that credit is due him most of all for his execution of the task he has taken upon himself of bringing to the stage the delicate realism which we have learned to admire in the modern novel. It is comparatively easy to make eccentricity pass for character—there are famous parts in our dramatic literature which would never have been famous but for a liberal sprinkling with “begad’ and “demme.”

But to exhibit, in printed fiction or upon the stage, the man who has no eccentricities and who yet has character, is a different matter. ” Can more discriminating or higher praise be given any man? This Fall, having left Mr. Daly’s Company, he appeared as a Star under Mr. Frohman’s management. If he had any doubts of the regard in which he was held by his friends, they were set at rest, for his reception the opening night at Palmer’s Theatre was simply an ovation.”

Napoléon Sarony (March 9, 1821 – November 9, 1896) was an American lithographer and photographer. He was a highly popular portrait photographer, best known for his portraits of the stars of late-19th-century American theater. His son, Otto Sarony, continued the family business as a theater and film star photographer.—Wikipedia (2026)

Sun & Shade: An Artistic Periodical

“Within the covers of Sun and Shade…We shall especially endeavor to encourage the artistic side of direct photography in all its phases,”—Ernest Edwards, president & publisher, 1889

In July, 1888, the first issue of Sun & Shade: A Photographic Record of Events, was published in New York City by The Photo-Gravure Company. Essentially a high-class art periodical, each issue featured eight or more beautiful hand-pulled photogravures as well as plates printed in photogelatine, (collotype) and halftone. These were collected within a stapled, folio-sized magazine issued monthly.  The subject matter included the work of leading amateur and professional photographers, as well as works of art—many from the galleries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. The December issue—Christmas themed—featured a specially designed cover printed in green ink.  Success was swift. The first issue sold 1000 copies “in a fortnight”. (1.) Within the first year, Sun & Shade quickly increased circulation to 4000 copies a month. With a public demand for reprinting earlier issues, this success lead to a rebranding, after which, beginning with the September, 1889 issue, the magazine was renamed Sun & Shade: An Artistic Periodical. The final issue was March, 1896, when financial issues to the parent company, spurred by the eventual May, 1896 bankruptcy of the N.Y. Photo-Gravure Company, forced its closure.

Sun & Shade would become the ultimate statement of the many skills and inquisitive mind of Englishman Ernest Edwards. (1836-1903) Essentially his own printed passion project, the magazine was fueled by his ongoing love of photography in the field (issues featured many plates by him over the years) and a deeply scientific mind which pushed the advancement of the state of photo-mechanical reproduction and fine printing.

The son of a clergyman from Bloomsbury in London, he initially made a name for himself taking photographic portraits of eminent people in his Baker Street gallery. (Charles Darwin sat for him several times) His love of the outdoors also bore fruit and he became an accomplished alpine photographer. But his real interest centered around photo-mechanical reproduction. In 1869, he took out a patent in England for his own rudimentary collotype process called heliotype. In the Fall of 1872, he moved across the pond along with his wife Charlotte, and became superintendent of Boston’s Heliotype Printing Company after selling the American rights to American publisher James Ripley Osgood. (1836–1892) Edwards ran the Heliotype Printing Co. there until the end of 1884. The following year the James R. Osgood & Co. went bankrupt, although not a result of the heliotype division.

Growing restless in Boston, he then moved to New York City, where he established a new firm in March, 1885: The Photo-Gravure Company, (subsequently renamed The New York Photo-Gravure Company) with offices in Manhattan and a leased printing factory in Brooklyn. In 1887, his company received perhaps the one commission it’s best known for today: the printing of  781 collotypes, which Edwards called photogelatine plates, making up the monumental publication:

Animal Locomotion. An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements, 1872-1885, with the landmark sequenced motion study photographs taken by British photographer Eadweard Muybridge. 

Restructured in 1891 as the New York Photogravure Co., Ernest Edwards continued to advance the state of photo-mechanical printing during his final decade, with Sun & Shade publishing some of the earliest examples of his own invention by 1894: plates printed in a three-color process called chrome-gelatine, a variation of his heliotype process.

Quality Rather than Quantity

Even though it survived less than eight years in print, describing Sun & Shade in Ernest Edward’s own words is perhaps the best posterity for this important photographic periodical with an artistic heart. One year after its’ debut, he wrote the following, published in The Photographic Times for August 2, 1889:

“A year ago we commenced the publication of our novel venture in journalism Sun and Shade, a Picture Periodical without letterpress, almost as an experiment, with a modest list of less than fifty subscribers. To-day we are printing an edition of 4,000 copies monthly. A sufficiently convincing proof of the wisdom of our hope that there was room for us.

“In our rapid growth the wish has been indicated unmistakably for the higher grade of pictures, and of the higher class–always for quality rather than quantity. Following rather than leading such a wish, we feel that we make no mistake in marking the future career of the magazine to be rather that of an artistic periodical than a photographic record of events.

*Our efforts shall be directed in the future to make Sun and Shade an artistic periodical which shall be not only pleasing but educational in its broadest sense, Some of our plans may be briefly referred to.

“We shall reproduce the leading pictures in the great collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Within the covers of Sun and Shade will be found from time to time, reproductions of the works of American artists. We shall especially endeavor to encourage the artistic side of direct photography in all its phases, And we shall supplement these special features with examples of sculpture, architecture, and industrial art. If in the future we receive as hearty a response to our efforts as we have received in the past, our task will be indeed pleasant and our road to success a royal one.” (p. 394)

1. Notice: Sun & Shade: October, 1888. The August and September issues did not appear.