Charles Fraser, Malbone's contemporary and friend, likewise excelled, especially in male portraiture. Others of this period and men who afterwards forsook their art for other interests, but who were recognized as successful miniature painters, were Robert Fulton (1765-1815) the inventor of the steamboat, and Alvan Clark, the most notable of all lens grinders. John Ramage, an Irishman by birth, became a well known miniature painter in Boston and New York about this time, and also Richard M. Staigg, who, though born in England, was prominently identified with American art as one of the original members of the National Academy of Design and a miniature painter of distinction, strongly influenced by Malbone. Benjamin Trott was a contemporary of Malbone's and Fraser's, whose painting was characterized by strength and delicacy. Anson Dickinson, John Wesley Jarvis, Joseph Wood, Henry Inman of Philadelphia, and Charles Cromwell Ingham, may also be mentioned among the miniature painters of the early nineteenth century, together with Sarah Goodridge, a protégé of Gilbert Stuart's, and whose work reached a great degree of excellence about 1840, and later John Henry Brown. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN, BY ISAAC A. JOSEPHI In the possession of the New York Historical Society] About this time miniature painting began to decline, owing to the introduction of the daguerreotype and the photograph. Such American artists as devoted their efforts to miniature painting struggled on without sufficient recognition until, feeling the need of organization and the encouragement in this branch of art that an association would lend, the American Society of Miniature Painters was founded in 1899 by William J. Baer, Alice Beckington, Lucia Fairchild Fuller, Laura Coombs Hills, John A. McDougall, Virginia Reynolds, Theodora M. Thayer, and William J. Whittemore. It was the intention of the Society to hold annual exhibitions, where the work of all American miniaturists could be passed upon by a competent jury and then be seen by the public. The first annual exhibition was held in January, 1900, at the Galleries of Messrs. Knoedler & Co., New York City. Isaac A. Josephi, prominent as a miniaturist at this time, became its first president, and is accredited with the conception of the Society. William J. Baer, sometime president and afterwards treasurer of the Society, contributed largely through his efforts to make the Society the factor that it has since become in the art world.