California News

California News is William Sidney Mount's personal response to the gold fever that spread throughout the nation in the mid-nineteenth century. This work was painted for Thomas McElrath, co-publisher of the New York Daily Tribune--explaining why the newspaper takes such a central position in the painting. An unidentified contemporary critic wrote that the canvas "represents a party reading that clever and deserving paper containing news from California, when the yellow fever was first breaking out." Mount apparently used his friends and family as models for the work. The man seated at the table to the right is said to be Shepard Alonzo Mount, and the young woman on the left the artist's niece, Maria Seabury. Mount filled his composition with the excitement of the gold rush through his portrayal of the various expressions of hope in the faces of his sitters.