[3] Two years later, Metcalf accompanied archeologist Edward Sylvester Morse on a trip to Japan, where he produced stereographic views of the country, later published and marketed by Bennett.

[5] Metcalf was initiated into photography by Wisconsinite Henry Hamilton Bennett, a Civil War veteran, whom he accompanied on trips to the Dells of the Wisconsin River and for whom he occasionally posed.

[14] Also included were genre scenes by Carl Frithjof Smith, Nikolaos Gyzis, and Charles Courtney Curran, as well as landscapes by David Johnson, Arthur B. Davies, Constant Troyon, Paul Weber, and Peter Moran.

[12][15] Beginning in the mid-1870s, Metcalf supported various initiatives for art education in Milwaukee, such as the acquisition of a series of photographs of European painting and sculpture by Adolphe Braun, which artist John S. Conway had advised should be displayed in bookstores in the city.

[17] Though he considered creating a proper art museum in town on his own funds, the proposal laid out by fellow businessman Frederick Layton to built such structure in 1883 altered his plans.