A painter of portraits, landscapes, and works of genre, or scenes of everyday life, William Smith Jewett became California’s first resident professional artist. Jewett was born near South Dover, New York, and he studied at New York City’s prestigious National Academy of Design. He established a portrait-painting practice in New York in 1833; in 1845 he was elected an associate member of the Academy.

Like innumerable other easterners, Jewett was lured to California by the promise of wealth during the Gold Rush. In 1849 he sailed to San Francisco as a member of a newly formed mining company. When it failed soon after his arrival, Jewett discovered that his artistic talents were in high demand among California’s newly rich, who prized his status as an established New York painter. Over the next two decades, Jewett prospered as one of California’s leading artists. Working from studios in both San Francisco and Sacramento, he produced numerous portraits on commission, in addition to California landscapes, religious subjects, and genre scenes. An intimate of many of the state’s political and business leaders, Jewett was also an astute investor who made a considerable fortune in real estate and agriculture ventures.

Jewett returned to New York in 1869 a wealthy man. He married in 1870, made a brief return visit to California in 1871, and the following year went to Europe for study and pleasure. His only child, William Dunbar Jewett, who later became a sculptor, was born in England. The painter’s tour was cut short by illness, and he died in Springfield, Massachusetts, shortly after his return to the United States. Jewett was a prolific painter, but many of his California works were lost in the fire that followed the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.