Born in Woodbridge, New Jersey in 1816, Thomas Ayres worked as a
draftsman in St. Paul with an engineering firm before arriving in
California in the Gold Rush of 1849. After a short time at the mines,
he soon abandoned his pursuit of gold and began traveling throughout
the interior of California making sketches and drawings in charcoal and
graphite.
In 1855 he was hired by James Mason Hutchings, a San Francisco
journalist, to join the first organized tourist party ever to visit
Yosemite. His sketches of the valley were used as illustrations
in Hutchings' Illustrated
California Magazine. His long
panorama of Yosemite, crossing the Isthmus of Panama, and gold mining
activities had a long run at McNulty
Source: Edan Hughes,
"Artists in California, 1786-1940"California Historical Society Quarterly, Sept. 1941; Honeyman Collection cat.;
Artists of the American West (Doris Dawdy);
California on Stone (Peters);
New York Historical Society's Dictionary of Artists in America (Groce, George C. and David H. Wallace);
California Pictorial (Van Nostrand & Coulter); Views of Yosemite;
First 100 Years of Painting in California (J. Van Nostrand);
Artists of the American West (Samuels); Art of the Gold Rush; Daily Alta California, 5-27-1858 (obituary).
Nearly 20,000 biographies can be found in Artists in California 1786-1940 by Edan Hughes and is available for sale ($150). For a full book description and order information please click here.
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