page_title: T. M. Schleier
section_title: Works
hierarchical_section_title: T. M. Schleier / Works
caption_attribution_description: English: Aaron and Hannah Jackson, two former slaves of U.S. President Andrew Jackson
context_page_description: Theodore M. Schleier was a Prussian-born American photographer, inventor, and diplomat, active primarily in the southeastern United States in the latter half of the 19th century. While operating from a studio in Nashville, Tennessee, he helped document life in the city during the Civil War. He later moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he captured some of the city's earliest photographs. His inventions include an early artificial lighting system for photography studios.
  Schleier was a delegate to the 1872 Republican National Convention, and served as U.S. Consul to Amsterdam from 1890 to 1893.
context_section_description: At various times during his career, Schleier specialized in ambrotypes, cartes de visite, and cabinet cards.  By 1863, he was using a "multiplying camera" designed by Simon Wing that utilized movable lenses to produce a popular type of photograph known as a "gem."  His branch studio in Knoxville, which opened in 1864, offered "photographs, cartes de visite and stereotypes."  His main Knoxville studio, which opened in 1867, specialized in ambrotypes, pearl miniatures, and photographs.  Schleier partnered with rising Knoxville painter Lloyd Branson to create several "photo-crayon portraits" which were exhibited at 1875 Eastern Division Fair.  In 1880, Schleier's Nashville gallery offered "artotypes" (a type of photograph created using ink) and "chromotypes" (colored photographs).
  The occupation of Nashville by the Union Army in March 1862 brought about the "photographic documentation of the town on an unprecedented scale."  Schleier and federal photographer George N. Barnard were the two most active photographers in the city during this period. Places and buildings photographed by Schleier during the war include the railroad bridge over the Cumberland River, Morgan Park, the Tennessee State Capitol, the tomb of James K. Polk, the Planters Hotel, and the original Elm Street Methodist Church (flanked at the time by federal barracks).  He also created carte de visite photographs for soldiers stationed in the city, including members of the all-German 32nd Indiana Infantry Regiment.
  Schleier's early photographs of Knoxville include an 1865 panoramic of the city from the Civil War-era Fort Stanley (which stood atop a hill in South Knoxville), and at least two photographs of East Tennessee University (the forerunner of the University of Tennessee).  During the 1870s, he produced stereo cards depicting various places in East Tennessee, including  the Montvale Springs resort at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains, and the remote Ocoee River Valley in southeastern Tennessee.
  During the 1880s, Schleier's studio sold numerous cabinet cards, a type of photograph that had largely replaced the carte de visite as the most popular form of portraiture.  Prominent individuals for whom Schleier created cabinet cards included President James Garfield, and Lakota chiefs Crow Dog, Spotted Tail and Red Cloud.  He photographed the upper Caney Fork Valley in 1883, and provided portraits for the American Institute of Architects convention in Nashville in 1885.
  In 1883, Schleier installed an early artificial lighting system in his Nashville studio with the help of T. P. Keck of the city's Brush Electric Light Company.  This system consisted of  two arc lights placed in the middle of a white parabolic reflector that measured 6 feet (1.8 m) in diameter.  The lights and reflector were suspended from the ceiling and operated with pulleys.  The system could generate 2,000 candlepower of light for a single photograph.
  Schleier's photographs are included in the collections of the George Eastman House, the American Museum of Natural History, the Tennessee State Library and Archives, the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection (Knox County, Tennessee), and the University of Tennessee.
caption: Aaron and Hannah Jackson, former slaves of Andrew Jackson, photographed by Schleier in 1865
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