Thankfully They Could Draw

Many of the early images we have of California were drawings made by expedition artists on board ships. In the age of discovery most of the European powers dispatched scientific expeditions throughout the world. Expeditions into the pacific usually included a stop in California.

One of the first images we have of the still primitive Mission Carmel was done in 1786 by an artist in a French expedition led by Jean-Francois de Galoup, Comte de la Perouse (1741-1788).

In 1788 La Perouse and his ships were lost at near the Solomon Islands, but fortunately for posterity, many of the expedition's drawings had already been sent back to Paris.

In 1789 Alejandro Malaspina (1754-1810), an Italian commander in the Spanish navy, was put in charge of a scientific exploration of the Pacific, stopping at Monterey, California the fall of 1791. The expedition artist Jose Cadero (1768-1797) made one of the first drawings of the Monterey Presidio.

MONTEREY PRESIDIO c. 1791
By Jose Cadero of Malaspina Expedition

In 1816 Otto von Kotzebue led a Russian expedition into the pacific. His ship, the Rurick, spent the month of October, 1816 in the Bay of San Francisco. The talented Ukranian-born expedition artist Louis Choris (1795-1828) produced some of the earliest and best drawings of California's native people .

INDIANS IN TULE BOAT - SAN FRANCISCO BAY
By Louis Choris

GAMES OF THE INHABITANTS OF CALIFORNIA 1816 (Mission Dolores)
By Louis Choris

Choris produced a splendid volume of colored lithographs from the trip under the title Picturesque Voyage around the World. Unfortunately he was killed by bandits in 1828 during an expedition to South America.

Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838), a German naturist in this same expedition collected and sketched plant specimens . He is remembered as the man who named the California Poppy (the official name is Eschscholzia caespitosa)..

COLLARLESS CALIFORNIA POPPY
By Adelbert Chamisso

Chamisso later became "Keeper of the Royal Botonical Gardens" in the Court of King William II of Prussia.

Frederick Beechey (1796-1856) a British naval officer, led a scientific expedition to the Pacific during which he visited California in 1826. Captain (later Admiral) Beechey published a book Narratives of a Voyage to the Pacific and Bering's Strait which include some of the best early drawings we have of the northern California missions.

MISSION CARMEL 1827

Today, digital cameras and camcorders have supplanted pencil and pen, but the tradition of creating a visual as well as a written record of special events persists. Much of what we know of the people and structures of early California is because of the skill and dedication of a handful of expedition artists and early visitors.