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Gabriel Harrison
California News
1850 (ca)
Daguerreotype
14 x 10.5 cm (5 1/2 x 4 1/8 ins)
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gilman Collection, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2005, Accession Number: 2005.100.334
LL/40463
Curatorial description
Harrison drew on his background as a playwright, poet, and actor for his role in this daguerreotype, posing with his employer, Martin Lawrence, and his son. The group gathers eagerly to listen to the latest news of the California gold rush, which was followed with great excitement in New York throughout the 1840s and 1850s. Harrison took his inspiration for this genre scene from a painting of the same title by the American artist William Sidney Mount (1807–1868).
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