- Object Name
- Maker
- Title
The Dead Miner (Mourning the Master)
- Date
1867
- Materials
Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
32 7/8 in x 38 1/2 in x 4 1/2 in (83.5 cm x 97.8 cm x 11.4 cm)
- Credit Line
Museum purchase
- Object ID
91.183.2
-
- Institution
Autry Museum of the American West
-
- Category
Art and Artifacts
- Remarks
Painting by Charles C. Nahl, The Dead Miner, 1867. Charles Christian Nahl established a career based on his paintings of California’s mining industry. Miners were portrayed in fiction and popular culture as either moral men or dissolute louts, offering lessons on virtue and vice. By the time Nahl painted this picture, the gold rush had long subsided. His work coincided with a popular reimagining of this legendary era as a time that tested the wills of men. His painting The Dead Miner was designed to elicit maximum sympathy: depicted as a martyr to progress, the miner’s outstretched hand clasps a portrait of his sweetheart, and he has only his loyal hound to mourn him.
- Subject
- Publication
West-fever Brian W. Dippie ; introduction by James H. Nottage. page 85
Convergence Autry National Center Magazine, 2007 Winter, Spring / Autry National Center. p. 25
Art of the gold rush by Janice T. Driesbach, Harvey L. Jones, and Katherine Church Holland. page 103
- Location
GP.Gallery Parks