Art of the Gold Rush

Few events in American history have epitomized the hopeful imaginings of people around the world as did the California Gold Rush of 1849. Word of the discovery of golden nuggets at Sutter's Mill near Sacramento in January 1848 spread like wildfire and brought an estimated 80,000 people, mostly men, to California in search of fortune. One world hosen to describe these immigrants-"Argonauts"-suggests the mythic tale of Jason and aptly conveys the spirit that surrounded this mass migration even in its own time. "Gold fever" spread so widely that many Argonauts made the pilgrimage from as far away as Australia and China. Three-fourths were American. Among the throngs were artists and writers. Though there is scant visual record of California before the Gold Rush, the arrival of the "Forty-niners" produced an outpouring of drawings, watercolors and ambitious oil paintings that offers significant insight into Gold Rush events and personages. Although few views of the gold Rush were produced by established artists of the day (with some notable exceptions), surviving examples by artists who traveled to California testify that several were skilled, some with the advantage of art school training, others apparently self-taught. They created engrossing images of the scenery, people and activity around them. In images ranging from casually rendered drawings of mining camp scenes to large oil paintings of sweeping mountain vistas, cityscapes and portraits commissioned by wealthy patrons, artists such as William Smith Jewett, Charles Christian Nahl, A.D.O. Browere and others created a visual narrative of Gold Rush events.