It’s not everyday that you come across a pile of old newspapers from the middle of the 19th century.

But that was the sight that greeted me in a second-hand bookshop recently within a few steps of the entrance.

The first thing I noticed was the familiar masthead of the Newcastle Courant with its wonderful slogan ‘General Hue and Cry.’

Launched in 1711, the Courant was published as a weekly newspaper for approaching 200 years in Newcastle, North and South Shields, Sunderland, Durham and the “Northern Counties of England.” (British Newspaper Archive).

At the top right-hand corner of each newspaper was the handwritten name ‘Mrs. Dickson,’ who I presumed might be their first owner.

As I scanned the front page of an edition dated Friday 18th June 1858, a more familiar name caught my eye, that of a ‘Mr. Sarony.’

A single-column advertisement informed readers that “Mr. Sarony will take no more portraits in Newcastle after Saturday, the 26th June.”

Mr. Sarony’s was a name that I had come across before during research into pioneering portrait photographers in Newcastle and the North-East of England during the 1850s.

According to the National Portrait Gallery in London, Oliver François Xavier Sarony (1820-1879) was born in Quebec and trained as a daguerreotypist in New York before travelling to England.

A brother of the better-known celebrity portrait photographer Napoleon Sarony (1821-1896), Oliver “was one of the most successful provincial photographers of his time” (NPG website). 

Press reports and newspaper advertisements from the period paint a fascinating portrait of a man establishing his reputation.

Shortly before Christmas 1857, the Newcastle Journal announced that “the celebrated American photographer, late of Cambridge, Norwich and Scarborough” would be taking photographic portraits at 69 Blackett Street.

Mr. Sarony’s six month residency in Newcastle upon Tyne may have been brief.

But, as this advertisement reveals, he embedded himself at the heart of the city’s fast-growing photographic community in Blackett Street and neighbouring Grey Street.

I was delighted to find a supporting article on the paper’s back page revealing more details of the photographer’s collaborative approach to business.

Headlined ‘Mr. Sarony,’ it described his success in Newcastle as “truly astonishing.”

It then went on to highlight how the photographer had “at the solicitation of a few friends arranged with T. Carrick, Esq., of London, the well-known and distinguished miniature painter, to colour a few heads for him in this town.” 

The said Thomas Heathfield Carrick (1802-1874) was indeed “well-known and distinguished.”

A regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy in London, his miniature portraits were popularised in the form of engravings and mezzotint prints.

However, like many of his artist contemporaries, Carrick’s career was cut short by the arrival of photography.

In that context, Carrick’s advertised collaboration with Oliver Sarony at this point in both their careers can be viewed as a watershed moment for art and photography.

As a result of the aforementioned bookshop visit, two issues of the Newcastle Courant from June and August 1858 now feature in my collection of old newspapers. My bank account is slightly less healthy. 

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