Aimé Dupont, a Belgian sculptor turned photographer, and his wife, photographer Etta Greer, moved to New York in the 1880s, having established a reputation as portraitists of opera singers in Paris. Dupont quickly became the favourite of artists associated with the Metropolitan Opera Company, and his images were studied by rivals such as Herman Mishkin, then working with Oscar Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera Company as a photographer-publicist. In 1903 Aimé Dupont died and Etta Greer took over the portrait business. The Metropolitan Opera Company soon curtailed the contractual relationship with the studio, spuring both Greer and her son, Albert Dupont. Mishkin, whose work for Hammerstein had become widely known, stepped into the gap.
Updated 2018
