Albertus Del Orient Browere

Born in Tarrytown, New York, Albertus del Orient Browere was the son of sculptor John Henri Isaac Browere and received his first training from his father. He moved to Catskill, New York, upon his father’s death in 1834 and had to work as an apothecary for a time to support himself. Despite this he continued to paint, depicting scenes from the writings of James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving. Browere exhibited sporadically in New York through the 1840s and won an award for his history painting Canonicus and the Governor of Plymouth in 1841. He was eventually drawn west to California by the excitement of the gold rush and made his first trip there in 1852. He returned briefly to Catskill in 1856 but left again for San Francisco in 1858, where he stayed until 1861, when he moved back to Catskill for good. While Browere never made his fortune in gold, he used his experience to produce a series of scenes depicting the life of a miner.