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[Borthwick, J. D., del.?]

Bar Room in the Mines [and] Long Tom.

San Francisco: Lith. & Published by Britton & Rey, [ca. 1851]. Lithographic letter sheet, 10.75” x 8.25”, with two views, 4.875” x 7.5” and 4.75” x 7.5”. Originally issued with integral blank leaf which is lacking here. CONDITION: Good, a few minor chips along edges, old folds, some toning at edges and spots of discoloration.

A scarce pictorial letter sheet illustrating two phases of a California gold miner’s life—working a sluice and swilling booze.

The upper view shows three men drinking and playing cards around a table in a mining camp bar room, whose door is ajar. Standing behind a bar stocked with bottles and barrels, a bartender looks on while two men stand before him drinking and talking. On the floor are a bed roll, a mining pan, and a wooden crate. The second view, set among forested hills, depicts the same five miners working with picks, shovels, and pans at a “Long Tom” sluice. Their cabin is visible on the right in the background. 

In California Pictorial Letter Sheets, Dorothy Sloan speculates that the illustrations are “by J. D. Borthwick, a Scottish artist who joined the Gold Rush but abandoned mining when he found that he could make more money sketching miners and mining life. Images on at least three letter sheets (Baird 26, 81, & 86) are almost the same as the lithographs in Borthwick’s book, Three Years in California (1857).” 

Joseph Britton (1825–1901) became a lithographer in New York, and in 1849 moved to California where he worked as a prospector for several years. Britton became a partner of Jacques J. Rey (1820–1892), who had studied lithography in Europe before coming to California himself in 1850. Britton and Rey’s partnership lasted four decades, Rey serving as the chief artist, while Britton worked as both a lithographer and artist, and handled the company’s business. Dubbed “the Currier & Ives of the West,” Britton & Rey were for a period the biggest producers of lithographs in California, their work providing an extensive visual history of the state beginning in its early gold rush days. The firm lasted until 1915, when it was acquired by A. Carlysle & Co. 

OCLC records just two copies, at Yale and UC San Diego. Google searches locate copies at the Smithsonian and LOC as well.

REFERENCES: Baird 7; Clifford 8, illus. plate 6; Last, Jay. The Color Explosion : Nineteenth-Century American Lithography (Santa Ana, CA, 2005), p. 45; Peters, H. T., California on Stone, p. 66.

Item #9144

Price: $1,800.00

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