3,000, 27 September 1900.1. Walton Bean and James J. Rawls, California: An Interpretive History (New York: McGraw Hill, 1983), 85–87.
2. David Lavender, California: A Bicentennial History (New York: W. W. Norton and the American Association for State and Local History, 1976), 52–53; quoting Walter Colton, Three Years in California (New York: Barnes, 1850), 246–47.
3. Lavender, California: A Bicentennial History, 53.
4. Malcolm J. Rohrbough, Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 25–27.
5. Owing to political turmoil and relatively sparse settlement, there are no exact figures on the size and composition of California’s population in 1848.
6. Rohrbough, Days of Gold, 26.
7. David Lavender, California: Land of New Beginnings (Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 165–66.
8. Ibid.
9. Anthony Kirk, “In a Golden Land So Far: The Rise of Art in Early California,” California History 71 (spring 1992): 2–23; an excellent overview of pre–Gold Rush art, including images created by members of exploration and survey parties.
10. Occupations are listed in ships’ logs. See John E. Pomfret, ed., California Gold Rush Voyages: Three Original Narratives (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1954), 95–96, 172–76.
11. “Journal of a Voyage from Boston, Mass. to San Francisco, California in the Brig North Bend, Capt. Higgins, by C. H. Ellis, Passenger,” in Pomfret, ed., California Gold Rush Voyages, 12; see also Lavender, California: A Bicentennial History, 63, and Frank Marryat, Mountains and Molehills, or Recollections of a Burnt Journal (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1952), 156, 174, 304, 313, 381.
12. Jeanne Van Nostrand, The First Hundred Years of Painting in California, 1775–1875 (San Francisco: John Howell-Books, 1980), 92; and Dudley T. Ross, The Golden Gazette (Fresno, Calif.: Valley, 1978), 29.
13. Benjamin Parke Avery, “Art Beginnings on the Pacific,” Overland Monthly 1 (July 1868): 30.
14. Report of the First Industrial Exhibition of the Mechanics’ Institute of the City of San Francisco, September 7–26, 1857 (San Francisco, Calif.: Printed at the Franklin Office, 1858), 16.
15. John S. Hittell, “Art in San Francisco,” Pacific Monthly 10 (July 1863): 99–107.
1. Thomas A. Ayres, program accompanying the exhibition California! On Canvas! (collection, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley). See also Jeanne Van Nostrand, The First Hundred Years of Painting in California, 1775–1875 (San Francisco: John Howell-Books, 1980), 42; Jeanne Van Nostrand and Edith M. Coulter, California Pictorial: A History in Contemporary Pictures, 1786 to 1859 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1948), 136.
2. Van Nostrand, The First Hundred Years, 42, citing Daily Alta California, 7 August 1854.
3. Among drawings by Ayres that were reproduced as prints was an 1855 view of a pilot boat off the Golden Gate that was lithographed by Britton and Rey in San Francisco, as noted in John Haskell Kemble, San Francisco Bay: A Pictorial Maritime History (Cambridge, Md.: Cornell Maritime Press, 1957), 114. See also Nancy K. Anderson, “Thomas A. Ayres and His Early Views of San Francisco: Five Newly Discovered Drawings,” The American Art Journal 19 (1987): 19–28.
4. Anderson, “Thomas A. Ayres,” 22–24.
5. Ibid.
6. Van Nostrand, The First Hundred Years, 82.
7. Sacramento Daily Union, 1 June 1858, p. 4; Jeanne Van Nostrand, “Thomas A. Ayres: Artist-Argonaut of California,” California Historical Society Quarterly 20 (September 1941): 275–79; Van Nostrand, The First Hundred Years, 82.
8. The artist’s name is listed as Ezekiel Hall Martin in an article about him in the Cincinnati Daily Mirror, 1835.
9. Robinson & Jones’s Cincinnati Directory for 1846 (“first annual issue”): “Martin E. Hall, portrait painter, N E cor Vine and 5th [and Franklin].”
10. Doggett’s New York City Directory (1847–48), 276: “E. Martin Hall, artist, 251 Broadway.”
11. Mary Bartlett Cowdry, American Academy of Fine Arts and American Art Union Exhibition Record, 1816–1852 (New York: The New-York Historical Society, 1953), 243. Castle of San Juan Ulloa, sold to Duncan Grant (New York) 1847, lot no. 36; Boy Fishing, sold to Edwin Croswell (Albany, New York), lot no. 376; Marine View, sold to George Campbell (Pittsfield, Mass.), 1848.
12. United States Department of the Navy, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Division of Naval History (OP 09B9), Ships’ Histories Section: “History of Ships Named Somers,” March 5, 1962, p. 1.
13. Alta California, 16 January 1850, p. 1, col. 3.
14. The Illustrated California News 1, no. 1 (1 September 1850), p. 7, col. 1. This periodical was published only from 1 September through 1 December 1850. No sketch of a “miner prospecting” (by Martin) was printed.
15. Inscription on reverse of painting: “Mr. A. Reynolds, Buffalo, Via China and Cape Good Hope, Favor of Capt. Johnson, Clipper Ship Invincible.”
16. Sacramento Transcript, 20 December 1850, p. 2, col. 2.
1. Anthony Kirk, “In a Golden Land So Far: The Rise of Art in Early California,” California History 71 (spring 1992): 8.
2. Mcllvaine exhibited Panning Gold, under the title Scene on the Tuolumne, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the National Academy of Design during the 1850s. Jeanne Van Nostrand and Edith M. Coulter, California Pictorial: A History in Contemporary Pictures, 1786 to 1859 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1948), 107.
3. M. & M. Karolik Collection of American Water Colors and Drawings, 1800–1875, vol. 1 (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1962), 231.
4. Jeanne Van Nostrand, in The First Hundred Years of Painting in California (San Francisco: John Howell-Books, 1980), refers on page 56 to an early genre painting of the Gold Rush by Mcllvaine as well as to several other landscapes by the artist.
5. Willard B. Farwell, “Cape Horn and Cooperative Mining in ’49,” California Excerpts from Century Magazine (August 1890–April 1902): 592.
6. Ibid.
7. When the swarm of immigrants to San Francisco resulted in an overwhelming increase in the amount of mail sent there, its postal officials were severely criticized. In an effort to improve service, Jacob B. Moore—who was from Eastman’s hometown—was appointed San Francisco’s postmaster. It is likely Eastman’s employment was a result of his acquaintance with Moore. John Walton Caughey, ed., “Life in California in 1849: As Described in the ‘Journal’ of George F. Kent,” California Historical Society Quarterly 20 (March 1941): 29–30.
8. Jeanne Van Nostrand, San Francisco, 1806–1906 in Contemporary Paintings, Drawings and Watercolors (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1975), pl. 19.
9. In addition to his other activities, Eastman continued to produce original watercolors, including an early portrait of James Marshall (now at Marshall Gold Discovery State Park in Coloma) and a view of Sutter’s Fort. He also received a prize for A Scene in Montgomery Street in 1851 at the First Industrial Exhibition of the Mechanics’ Institute in 1857. Eastman was an early teacher of William Keith, one of the outstanding late-nineteenth-century California landscape painters, and a contributor to the establishment of a community of artists in San Francisco. Van Nostrand, The First Hundred Years, 38; Brother Cornelius, Keith: Old Master of California (New York: Putnam, 1942), 17.
10. J. D. Borthwick, 3 Years in California, with index and foreword by Joseph A. Sullivan (Oakland, Calif.: Biobooks, 1948), 132.
11. Malcolm J. Rohrbough, Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 137.
12. James E. Henley, director, Sacramento Archives and Museum Collection Center, conversation with author, 30 May 1997.
13. Henry Winfred Splitter, “Quicksilver at New Almaden,” Pacific Historical Review 26 (February 1957): 33–50.
14. Ibid., 41.
15. Ibid.; also citing James Butterworth Randol, “Quicksilver,” in Report on Mineral Industries in the United States at the Eleventh Census in 1890 (n.p., n.d.): 179–245.
16. John Woodhouse Audubon, Audubon’s Western Journal (Cleveland: Clark, 1906), reprinted with introduction by Frank Heywood Hodder and memoir by Maria R. Audubon (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984), 41.
17. John Woodhouse Audubon, Illustrated Notes of an Expedition through Mexico and California (New York, 1852), reprinted (Tarrytown, N.Y., 1915), 8.
18. Audubon, Audubon’s Western Journal, 116–17.
19. Ibid., 189–95.
20. Ibid., 204.
21. Ibid., 223.
22. Ibid., 225–28.
1. William Smith Jewett, 23 December 1849, in Elliot Evans, “Some Letters of William S. Jewett, California Artist,” California Historical Society Quarterly 23 (June 1944): 155–59.
2. In the 1840s, Jewett exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York, where he was made an associate. Reportedly, he received a commission to paint the governor of New York just before he left for California. However, while in the East, he does not appear to have achieved the “enviable reputation” attributed to him by Ferdinand C. Ewer; see Ewer, “The Fine Arts,” The Pioneer 2 (August 1854): 112.
3. Jewett, 28 January 1850, in Evans, “Some Letters,” 160.
4. Although Jewett regularly participated in exhibitions at the National Academy of Design while in New York, he was represented by only a single entry, his Portrait of Washington A. Bartlett in 1851, once he was in California. He did join the Society of California Pioneers in 1856 and contributed to the inaugural exhibition of the Mechanics’ Institute the following year, but Jewett seems to have shied away from formal affiliations in San Francisco as well.
5. See note 3 above.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 160–61.
8. Jewett, 30 January 1850, in Evans, “Some Letters,” 162.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Alta California (San Francisco), 18 March 1850.
12. Ibid.
13. Elliot Evans, “The Promised Land,” Quarterly of the Society of California Pioneers 36 (November 1957): 4.
14. Ibid., 4–5.
15. Dawn Glanz, How the West Was Drawn (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1982): 61–62. Glanz notes that Jewett may have been familiar with Claude’s painting from an engraving made of it during the eighteenth century, and discusses other biblical and Mosaic references in The Promised Land, including the allusion to the story of Moses and the Israelites in its title.
16. Evans, “Promised Land,” 7.
17. Jeanne Van Nostrand, The First Hundred Years of Painting in California, 1775–1875 (San Francisco: John Howell-Books, 1980), 46.
18. Of fifteen paintings Jewett exhibited in New York before he left, five were landscapes. Of these, two were views of the Hudson River from Poughkeepsie, one a view of Lakes Washuning and Washanee in Connecticut, and two were simply called Landscape. The American Art Union had purchased one of the latter two before its exhibition in 1847. See Mary Bartlett Cowdry, National Academy of Design Exhibition Record, 1826–1860, vol. 1 (New York: The New-York Historical Society, 1943), 267–68.
19. Daily Alta California (San Francisco), 11 February 1851.
20. Jeanne Van Nostrand and Edith Coulter, California Pictorial: A History in Contemporary Pictures, 1786 to 1859 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1948), 117.
21. Daily Alta California (San Francisco), 5 April 1851.
22. Elliot Evans, letter (Archives of California Art, Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, Calif.).
23. Frank Marryat, Mountains and Molehills, or Recollections of a Burnt Journal (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1952), 347.
24. Ferdinand C. Ewer, “Editor’s Table,” The Pioneer 2 (August 1854): 112.
25. William Smith Jewett to the State Assembly, Sacramento, 27 April 1855 (Archives of California Art, Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, Calif.).
26. Journal of the Sixth Session of the Assembly of the State of California (Sacramento, 1855), 853, quoted in Evans, “Some Letters,” California Historical Society 23 (September 1944): 245.
27. William Smith Jewett to the Sacramento Daily Bee, 21 October 1855, p. 3.
28. General John A. Sutter to the Sacramento Daily Bee, 21 October 1855.
29. Bernardine Swawley, research report (Archives of California Art, Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, Calif.).
30. Daily Alta California (San Francisco), 28 December 1856, p. 2.
31. William Smith Jewett, 7 January 1860, in Evans, “Some Letters,” 227.
1. Moreland L. Stevens, Charles Christian Nahl, Artist of the Gold Rush, 1818–1878, exh. cat. (Sacramento, Calif.: E. B. Crocker Art Gallery, 1976), 39.
2. Purchased, along with Crossing the Plains, by Jane Stanford from J. O. Coleman for 3,000, 27 September 1900.
3. Ada Kruse Ducker, “Charles Christion Nahl: Argonaut Artist” (The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley), 28.
4. Stevens, Nahl, 133.
5. Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg, San Francisco’s Golden Era (Berkeley, Calif.: Howell-North, 1960), frontis.
6. Nahl family letters, 1842–76, portfolio (The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley).
7. Ibid.
8. Arthur Nahl to Wilhelm Nahl, 2 April 1858, in Nahl family letters.
9. Stevens, 133.
10. Ibid., 81.
After Judge Crocker died, Mrs. Crocker, considering the paintings inappropriate for her museum, donated them to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
1. Albert Dressler, California’s Pioneer Artist Ernest Narjot: A Brief Resume of the Career ofa Versatile Genius (San Francisco: privately printed, 1936).
2. J. D. Borthwick, 3 Years in California, with index and foreword by Joseph A. Sullivan (Oakland, Calif.: Biobooks, 1948), 167.
3. Gary Kurutz, “ ‘California is Quite a Different Place Now’: The Gold Rush Letters and Sketches of William Hubert Burgess,” California Historical Quarterly 56 (fall 1977): 211.
4. Ibid., 218.
5. George Burgess, to his mother (Archives of California Art, Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, Calif.).
6. Ibid.
7. Benjamin Parke Avery, “Art Beginnings on the Pacific,” Overland Monthly 1 (July 1868): 34.
8. Joseph A. Baird Jr., “San Francisco in July of 1849” (archives of Hirschl & Adler Galleries, N.Y., n.d., photocopy), 5.
9. George H. Burgess, MS (Archives of California Art, Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, Calif., n.d.).
10. J. W. Willeirs, “San Francisco in July, 1849,” research compiled for Warren E. Howell of John Howell Bookstore, San Francisco, 23 August 1977 (Archives of California Art, Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, Calif.).
11. Burgess MS.
12. See note 8 above.
1. Browere’s first recorded contribution to a National Academy of Design exhibition was a painting titled Midnight at Jericho in 1831; two years later, his Rip Van Winkle was lent from the collection of a Mr. Wolf. He was represented by Capture at Fort Casmir in 1838, and with five paintings the following year, three subjects inspired by Washington Irving, The Lone Indian, and a “Sketch from Nature.” After that time, Browere exhibited only four paintings at the academy, his last entry being King Philip Relating His Wrongs to an Ally in 1846. National Academy of Design Exhibition Record, 1826–1860 (New York: The New-York Historical Society, 1943).
2. Mabel P. Smith and Janet R. MacFarlane, “Discovery and Rediscovery: Unpublished Paintings by Alburtis del Orient Browere,” Art in America 46 (fall 1958): 68–71.
3. Gary A. Reynolds, “The Landscapes of Alburtus Del Orient Browere (1814–1887)” (City University of New York Graduate Center, spring 1976), 10–11. This paper and Gary Reynolds, “The Life and Work of Alburtus Del Orient Browere (1814–1887)” (master’s thesis, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, 1977), are the most substantial sources on the artist. I want to thank Dr. William H. Gerdts for sharing these materials and other information on A. D. O. Browere with me. Also, Browere’s name does not appear in San Francisco City directories after 1852; Joan Hunt, “Alburtus Del Orient Browere” (Crocker Art Museum Archives, Sacramento, Calif., October 1984).
4. Reynolds, “The Life and Work of Alburtus Del Orient Browere,”29.
5. “Sign Painter Succeeds in Genre Field,” New York Sun, 10 February 1940, p. 9.
6. See, for example, Charles Deas, Long Jakes, 1844 (The Manoogian Collection, Detroit), or Arthur F. Tait, The Prairie Hunter—One Rubbed Out! 1852 (Autry Museum of Western Heritage, Los Angeles).
7. Hunt, “Alburtus Del Orient Browere,” citing The Columbia Gazette, 5 August 1854.
8. Everett Millard, telephone conversation with author, 17 March 1997.
9. Elizabeth Johns, American Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991), 91.
10. Jeanne Van Nostrand and Edith Coulter, California Pictorial: A History in Contemporary Pictures, 1786 to 1859 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1948), 103; see also note 5 above.
11. Browere’s California landscapes also include Mountains and Falls, California, 1852/62, in the collection of The Art Institute of Chicago, and Prospector in the Foothills of the Sierra, California, ca. 1855, at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.
12. Reynolds, “The Landscapes of Alburtus Del Orient Browere,” 8.
13. Jamestown or D. O. Mills’ Mill is undated and was at one time attributed to Juan Buckingham Wandesforde. Although Browere depicted many mining sites near Jamestown, this composition is somewhat unusual for the artist. See Janice Driesbach, “Landmarks of Early California Painting: The Crocker Art Museum Exhibition,” California History 71 (spring 1992): 29.
14. Van Nostrand and Coulter, California Pictorial, 156.
15. As there are no surviving sketchbooks or drawings from Browere’s residency in California, the term “sketch” may refer to such a small oil painting; Reynolds, “The Landscapes of Alburtus Del Orient Browere,” 12–13.
16. Sally Mills in Marc Simpson, Sally Mills, and Jennifer Saville, The American Canvas: Paintings from the Collection of The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1989), 80.
17. Ibid.
18. R. E. Mather and F. E. Boswell, John David Borthwick: Artist of the Gold Rush (Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah Press, 1989), 114; Reynolds, “The Life and Work of Alburtus Del Orient Browere,” 28.
19. Reynolds, “The Landscapes of Alburtus Del Orient Browere,” 14; Georgia Willis Read, “The Chagres River Route to California in 1851,” Quarterly of the California Historical Society 8 (March 1929): 4.
20. Reynolds, “The Life and Work of Alburtus Del Orient Browere,” 31.
21. Read, “The Chagres River Route,” 4.
22. The association between Browere’s paintings and earlier examples by Cole is made in Diana Strazdes, American Paintings and Sculpture to 1945 (New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with The Carnegie Museum of Art, 1992), 111. Browere could easily have seen Cole’s Voyage of Life series when it was on exhibition in New York in 1840. Van Nostrand and Coulter (California Pictorial, 68) note that Crossing the Isthmus was originally owned by Theodore F. Payne of San Francisco.
23. Mather and Boswell, John David Borthwick, 79–80.
24. Hunt, “Alburtus Del Orient Browere.”
25. Although the Tuolumne Courier of 16 March 1861 reported that Browere had “lately sold his ‘Horse Picture’ for 125 and the landscape, painted here, is now up for raffle,” there is little additional information indicating that his paintings were in demand; Hunt, “Alburtus Del Orient Browere.”
26. Reynolds, “The Landscapes of Alburtus Del Orient Browere,” 12.
27. Ibid., 15.
28. Johns, American Genre Painting, 91.
1. John S. Hittell, “Art in San Francisco,” Pacific Monthly 10 (July 1863): 105.
2. Moreland L. Stevens, Charles Christian Nahl: Artist of the Gold Rush, 1818–1878, exh. cat. (Sacramento, Calif.: E. B. Crocker Art Gallery, 1976), 133–34.
3. Daily Alta California (San Francisco), 31 October 1859.
4. Ibid., 2 September 1860, p. 1; ibid., 29 December 1865, p. 1; Hittell, “Art in San Francisco,” 105.
5. L. Eve Armentrout-Ma, “Chinese in California’s Fishing Industry,” California History 60 (summer 1981): 142.
6. Ibid.; also Robert F. G. Spier, “Food Habits of Nineteenth-Century California Chinese,” California Historical Society Quarterly 37 (March 1958): 82.
7. Report of the First Industrial Exhibition of the Mechanics’ Institute of the City of San Francisco, September 7–26, 1857 (San Francisco, Calif.: Printed at the Franklin Office, 1858), 97.
8. Frontier America: The Far West, exh. cat. (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1975), 126.
9. Daily Alta California, 11 September 1857.
10. Report of the First Industrial Exhibition, 101–102.
11. Daily Alta California (San Francisco), 3 September 1858; ibid., 8 September 1858; ibid., 9 September 1858.
12. Benjamin Parke Avery, “Art Beginnings on the Pacific,” Overland Monthly 1 (August 1868): 116.
1. Edan Milton Hughes, Artists in California, 1786–1940, 2d ed. (San Francisco: Hughes, 1989), 3.
2. The Henry H. Clifford Collection of California Pictorial Letter Sheets, Dorothy Sloan—Rare Books (Austin, Texas) auction catalogue, 26 October 1994, lot 338.
3. Moreland L. Stevens, Charles Christian Nahl: Artist of the Gold Rush, 1818–1878, exh. cat. (Sacramento, Calif.: E. B. Crocker Art Gallery, 1976), 57.
4. J. D. Borthwick, 3 Years in California, with index and foreword by Joseph A. Sullivan (Oakland, Calif.: Biobooks, 1948), 296.
5. Malcolm J. Rohrbough, Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 138.
6. Joseph Armstrong Baird Jr., ed., France and California (Davis, Calif.: University of California, 1967), 16.
7. Ibid.
A watercolor study for this painting, 15 × 27½ in. (sight), is inscribed on its mat (at lower center): “San Francisco/Spring 1850/From the head of Clay Street/An original watercolor/by/Geo. H. Burgess/Made for James C. Flood” (collection, Society of California Pioneers, San Francisco).
8. Baird, France and California, p. 16.
9. Bret Harte, The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903), 14.