California News, by William Sidney Mount (1807–1868)
To Use This Document
With Your Students
Date
1850
Description
(news from the gold diggers) Crowd of men, one woman, one boy in a room around a table; one man reads the paper 'New York Daily Tribune' (possibly aloud to the crowd); above the doorway in the background is 'Post Office'; a poster next to the doorway advertises for a boat trip to San Francisco; at the center left is a small sign that states 'Farm for sale'; on the table at the bottom center is another paper which states 'California Emigrants Look Here!'. California News provides a revealing glimpse of how a major national political, economic, and cultural event touched the North Shore of Long Island. The painting captures the zeitgeist of the discovery of gold in California, placing the resulting conversational buzz in Stony Brook’s community post office. Mount painted the work for Thomas McElrath, co-publisher (with Horace Greeley) of the New York Daily Tribune, and the artist has given the paper significant product placement at the center of the composition.
Type
Image
Region
Long Island
Era
Expansion and Reform
Topic
Communication
Repository
Identifier
0000.001.0014
Source
Long Island Museum, Stony Brook, NY, Gift of Mr. & Mrs. Ward Melville, 1955
Rights
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