For a time he was occupied in decorating the Royal Museum of Berlin, but became involved in the Revolution of 1848, and was compelled to leave his native land.

Ulke worked in New York designing banknotes, then illustrations for Harper's and Leslie's weeklies in Philadelphia from approximately 1853 to 1860.

It is presumed that Julian Ulke took a famous photo of the Petersen house room in which Lincoln died on the morning of April 15.

Portraits include Earls Elgin and Gray, Sir Frederick Bruce, Robert Kennicott, William Stimpson, Edwin M. Stanton, Charles Sumner, James G. Blaine, Treasury Secretaries Crawford, Taney, Bibb, Chase, and Carlisle, Generals Grant, Rawlins, and Blair, as well as Samuel D. Ingham (1893).

Mr. Ulke was a personal friend of Abraham Lincoln, and at the time of the assassination the dying President was carried into the famous Tenth Street house, where he was boarding.