''California'' is a mid-19th century marble sculpture. Crafted by American sculptor

Hiram Powers Hiram Powers (July 29, 1805 – June 27, 1873) was an American neoclassical sculptor. He was one of the first 19th-century American artists to gain an international reputation, largely based on his famous marble sculpture ''The Greek Slave''. ...

, the marble statue is an allegory for the wealth and danger of

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. The sculpture, which is currently on display at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, was the first sculpture by an American artist to enter the museum's collection.

Background

During the mid-19th century, the use of nude female sculptures as allegories of places was a prevalent artistic trend.Colbert, C. (2000). Spiritual Currents and Manifest Destiny in the Art of Hiram Powers. ''The Art Bulletin,'' ''82''(3), 529-543. doi:10.2307/3051400 Hiram Powers, already famed for his sculpture ''

The Greek Slave ''The Greek Slave'' is a marble sculpture by the American sculptor Hiram Powers. It was one of the best-known and critically acclaimed American artworks of the nineteenth century, and is among the most popular American sculptures ever. It was the ...

'', began to work on producing a statue to encapsulate the spirit of the then-ongoing

California Gold Rush The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California fro ...

. Powers was enthusiastic about the project, and began work on the sculpture before he had secured funding. Powers initially planned to place the completed sculpture at

Sutter's Mill Sutter's Mill was a water-powered sawmill on the bank of the South Fork American River in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California. It was named after its owner John Sutter. A worker constructing the mill, James W. Marshall, found gold t ...

, where the gold flakes that sparked the gold rush had been found in early 1848. Powers began his work on ''California'' in 1850, and by 1855 had completed a plaster casting of the future sculpture. The carving of the statue was completed by 1858. Rather than being sent to California as was originally intended, the sculpture was instead finished on commission for New York business magnate William Backhouse Astor Sr. In 1872 Astor gifted the statue to the newly-established Metropolitan Museum of Art in

, where it became the first sculpture executed by an American artist in the museum's collection.

Description

''California'' was carved by Powers in the form of young woman. She holds a

divining rod Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, claimed radiations (radiesthesia),As translated from one preface of the Kassel experiments, "roughly 10,000 active dowsers in Ge ...

(a tool purportedly able to detect gold deposits) in her left hand, crossed in front of her body, while her right hand holds a branch covered with thorns. These two symbols represent both the outward opportunity and hidden dangers of pursuing the alluring lands of California. To the figure's back-right stands a column of

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...

; as gold was often found among quartz deposits, the mineral's depiction represents the mineral wealth of California, both the state and the sculpture.

References

{{Reflist 1858 sculptures Sculptures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art