Going to California: Crossing the Isthmus

Alburtus Del Orient (A.D.O.) Browere was born in Tarrytown , New York in 1814, the son of John Henry Isaac Browere, a sculptor. Young Browere received his first art training from his father and may have at one time studied at the National Academy of Design in New York , where he began exhibiting his work in 1831. His first paintings were inspired by Rip Van Winkle stories, popular at this time. He earned an award in 1841 for his painting Canonicus and the Governor of Plymouth . After this award he exhibited paintings only sporadically, achieving modest success. In 1834 Browere moved to Catskill , New York , the favored site of the Hudson River School artists. In order to support his family, Browere clerked in a drugstore and painted carriage and other signs, leaving little time for his easel painting.

Browere made two trips to California : one from 1852 to 1856 and a second from 1858 to 1861. The reason for his first trip is unknown, although, like so many others, he was probably lured to California with the promise of wealth. He made the trip to California via a four-month voyage around Cape Horn . He was listed as a carriage painter in San Francisco in 1852, earning enough money to buy supplies for a trip to the Sierra foothills. While residing in San Francisco , he met Charles Christian Nahl. His early mining paintings manifest the influence of Nahl paintings and illustrations.

By the summer of 1854 Browere had settled in Columbia , California , and set up a business as a sign and ornamental painter. During this first California sojourn Browere painted genre (everyday) scenes of the miners – he had realized that the heyday of mining was nearing an end and wanted to record his observations. Browere was also impressed with the distinctive geography of the Mother Lode and painted topographic landscapes with incidental figures. Most of these paintings returned East to Catskill with Browere at the end of his stay in 1856.

In 1858 Browere returned to California , this time via the Panama route. He may have returned in order to replenish his studies for Gold Rush paintings he would later create exhibitions in the east. Shortly after arriving in California , he may have painted two scenes of the Chagres route, which he had just traversed. Crossing the Isthmus , one of the two, shows the verdant tropical foliage that so impressed the Eastern emigrants, as Lucilla Brown described in her bungo boat ride up the Chagres River in 1849. “The luxuriant jungle… with flowers, birds of gay plumage flying hither and thither, the chattering of monkeys, the scream of parrots. I am delighted.” Browere again returned to Columbia , where he painted portraits, landscapes, and decorative paintings.

In 1861 Browere left California for the last time and returned to Catskill , New York . He continued to paint signs and register boards until 1886. He died in 1887. A.D.O. Browere was an innovative painter of California landscapes and genre scenes of mining life at a time when many Easterners had little respect or interest in the gold miners. Browere's activity predates and anticipates the flowering of California landscape and romanticized depictions of Gold Rush subjects in the 1870s and 1880s.

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During the Gold Rush it is estimated that 23,000 people came across the continent to California in 1849 and that an additional 45,000 poured across the Sierra the following year. By 1851, another 30,097 came to San Francisco via Panama .

The main Panama Route began in New York , when a passenger boarded a steamship bound for Chagres , Panama . There passengers disembarked and took a bungo boat (a hollowed-out log used as a boat by native Panamanians) to Gorgona. From there, they hired mules to carry them down steep mountains into Panama City , where they hoped to connect with a Pacific Mail steamship. One intrepid mule traveler wrote about his experience. “After being jolted to almost paralytic unconsciousness on the mules, alternately burned by the tropic sun and soaked by the tropic showers, and liberally bespotted by the mosquitoes and other nameless visitors of the previous three nights, the Argonauts hailed Panama (City) with delight . ”

Ancient Panama City was not prepared for the hordes of travelers, who descended upon it waiting for a steamer, which might not come for over a month. Due to the unsanitary conditions and lack of preventive medical knowledge, severe outbreaks of cholera, yellow fever and malaria occurred in Panama City . As the steamers left Panama , they piled as many passengers as possible on the boats and picked up more on various stops along the way. On board the crowded steamers, the diseases the passengers contracted in Panama City reached epidemic proportions; food and water was in short supply. There were stops along the way, such as at Acapulco for provisions, and then on to the final destination in San Francisco . As the steamer approached San Francisco , some sailors, caught up in the “gold fever,” began to “jump ship.” Over time, as steamship schedules improved and a railroad across the isthmus was built (completed in 1855), the Panama Route became faster and more comfortable.

The horrors described above are unimaginable in the serene painting Crossing the Isthmus . Browere probably made his trip on the newly completed railroad across the isthmus, when the trip was much more comfortable. Browere romanticized the trip in his painting by depicting an earlier time when the traveler traversed the isthmus on a mule. However, the realities of the arduous trip are overshadowed by a landscape full of luxuriant, tropical plants, a towering tropical mountain and a calm flowing river. No sound appears to break the silence of this idyllic scene; except for the rider and his three pack mules in the lower left. They are but small specks in this paradise-like landscape.