Early California artists

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Early California Artists are a subset of American Western artists, painting in the mid-to-late 19th century. Their styles varied from realistic representation to the imagined.

The Early California artists helped shape and create California in culture and politics. Some were members of early survey expeditions of the West, such as Thomas Ayres and Albert Bierstadt. Their eyes, via their art, were the eyes through which the Easterners saw and imagined California and 'The West,' from the renowned early California artists Thomas Hill, William Keith, and Thomas Moran to the populist John Englehart.