Art of the Gold Rush : (Published in Association with the Oakland Museum of California and the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento)

The California Gold Rush captured the get-rich dreams of people around the world more completely than almost any event in American history. This catalog, published in celebration of the sesquicentennial of the 1848 discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, shows the vitality of the arts in the Golden State during the latter nineteenth century and documents the dramatic impact of the Gold Rush on the American imagination. Among the throngs of gold-seekers in California were artists, many self-taught, others formally trained, and their arrival produced an outpouring of artistic works that provide insights into Gold Rush events, personages, and attitudes. The best-known painting of the Gold Rush era, C.C. Nahl's __Sunday Morning in the Mines__ (1872), was created nearly two decades after gold fever had subsided. By then the Gold Rush's mythic qualities were well established, and new allegories—particularly the American belief in the rewards of hard work and enterprise—can be seen on Nahl's canvas. Other works added to the image of California as a destination for ambitious dreamers, an image that prevails to this day. In bringing together a range of art and archival material such as artists' diaries and contemporary newspaper articles, __The Art of the Gold Rush__ broadens our understanding of American culture during a memorable period in the nation's history.

The California Gold Rush captured the get-rich dreams of people around the world more completely than almost any event in American history. This catalog, published in celebration of the sesquicentennial of the 1848 discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, shows the vitality of the arts in the Golden State during the latter nineteenth century and documents the dramatic impact of the Gold Rush on the American imagination.
Among the throngs of gold-seekers in California were artists, many self-taught, others formally trained, and their arrival produced an outpouring of artistic works that provide insights into Gold Rush events, personages, and attitudes. The best-known painting of the Gold Rush era, C.C. Nahl's Sunday Morning in the Mines (1872), was created nearly two decades after gold fever had subsided. By then the Gold Rush's mythic qualities were well established, and new allegories—particularly the American belief in the rewards of hard work and enterprise—can be seen on Nahl's canvas. Other works added to the image of California as a destination for ambitious dreamers, an image that prevails to this day.
In bringing together a range of art and archival material such as artists' diaries and contemporary newspaper articles, The Art of the Gold Rush broadens our understanding of American culture during a memorable period in the nation's history.

Kirkus Reviews

A tad predictably, this survey of works on paper that emerged from California at around the time of the gold rush (1848) abounds in picturesque views of duly mountainous landscapes. There are also plenty of harborside San Francisco scenes to surprise the eye with the proximity of a very few sailing vesselsþand even fewer skippers. Likewise, William Birch McMurtrie's vision of Telegraph Hill, circa 1849: The modesty of his sparse, low-lying dwellings is outdone only by the unbuilt bare vista extending alongside them. As with many 19th-century California scenes, his seems steeped in a pale golden aura, perhaps the greedy projection of a visiting artist who was hoping to mine a certain vein. Driesbach (curator at the Crocker Art Museum), Jones (curator at the Oakland Museum), and Holland (a former curator at the California Historical Society) give historical and biographical information, and observe some of the European influences that generally guided the painters; other influences can be inferred without them. For instance, A.D.O. Browere's Miners of Placerville owes something to Breughel in the scale, hue, and figurative compression of these he-men dwarfed by trees and hefting ropes and axes. But the impact of the book as a whole is held back by the small size of its color reproductions, which assigns to the hugeness of California a mincing, unconvincing Victorianism.

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 The California Gold Rush captured the get-rich dreams of people around the world more completely than almost any event in American history. This catalog, published in celebration of the sesquicentennial of the 1848 discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, shows the vitality of the arts in the Golden State during the latter nineteenth century and documents the dramatic impact of the Gold Rush on the American imagination.

Among the throngs of gold-seekers in California were artists, many self-taught, others formally trained, and their arrival produced an outpouring of artistic works that provide insights into Gold Rush events, personages, and attitudes. The best-known painting of the Gold Rush era, C.C. Nahl's Sunday Morning in the Mines (1872), was created nearly two decades after gold fever had subsided. By then the Gold Rush's mythic qualities were well established, and new allegories—particularly the American belief in the rewards of hard work and enterprise—can be seen on Nahl's canvas. Other works added to the image of California as a destination for ambitious dreamers, an image that prevails to this day. In bringing together a range of art and archival material such as artists' diaries and contemporary newspaper articles, The Art of the Gold Rush broadens our understanding of American culture during a memorable period in the nation's history. The California Gold Rush captured the get-rich dreams of people around the world more completely than almost any event in American history. This catalog, published in celebration of the sesquicentennial of the 1848 discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, shows the vitality of the arts in the Golden State during the latter nineteenth century and documents the dramatic impact of the Gold Rush on the American imagination.Among the throngs of gold-seekers in California were artists, many self-taught, others formally trained, and their arrival produced an outpouring of artistic works that provide insights into Gold Rush events, personages, and attitudes. The best-known painting of the Gold Rush era, C.C. Nahl's Sunday Morning in the Mines (1872), was created nearly two decades after gold fever had subsided. By then the Gold Rush's mythic qualities were well established, and new allegories -- particularly the American belief in the rewards of hard work and enterprise -- can be seen on Nahl's canvas. Other works added to the image of California as a destination for ambitious dreamers, an image that prevails to this day.In bringing together a range of art and archival material such as artists' diaries and contemporary newspaper articles, The Art of the Gold Rush broadens our understanding of American culture during a memorable period in the nation's history. Foreword / Stephen C. Mcgough And Dennis M. Power -- Acknowledgments / Harvey L. Jones, Janice T. Driesbach And Katherine C. Holland -- Map Of The Gold Country -- Introduction: The Lure Of Gold / Janice T. Driesbach -- First In The Field: Thomas A. Ayres And E. Hall Martin / Janice T. Driesbach And Harvey L. Jones -- Scenes Of Mining Life: John Prendergast, Augusto Ferran, William Mcilvaine, W. Taber, William Birch Mcmurtrie, Harrison Eastman, Samuel Stillman Osgood, A.g., John Henry Dunnel, Washington F. Friend, John Woodhouse Audubon, Francis Samuel Marryat, And E. Godchaux / Janice T. Driesbach -- Portrait Painter To The Elite: William Smith Jewett / Janice T. Driesbach -- The Hessian Party: Charles Christian Nahl, Arthur Nahl, And August Wenderoth / Harvey L. Jones -- Souvenirs Of The Mother Lode: Ernest Narjot And George Henry Burgess / Harvey L. Jones -- Mining The Picturesque: A.d.o. Browere / Janice T. Driesbach. Janice T. Driesbach, Harvey L. Jones And Katherine Church Holland. Catalog Of An Exhibition Held At The Oakland Museum Of California, Oakland, Calif., Jan. 24-may 31, 1998; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, Calif., June 21-sept. 13, 1998; National Museum Of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.c., Oct. 30, 1998- Mar. 7, 1999. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 138-139) And Index. Contents Illustrations Foreword Acknowledgments Lenders to the Exhibition Introduction First in the Field Scenes of Mining Life Portrait Painter to the Elite The Hessian Party Souvenirs of the Mother Lode Mining the Picturesque In the Wake of the Gold Rush Sentiment and Nostalgia Biographies of the Artists Notes Selected Bibliography Artists Represented in the Exhibition Index