22 ¼ 34 ¼ inches, Duotone lithograph finished with hand color; light age-toning, else excellent condition.

A beautiful, delicately colored example of this very scarce, sweeping and historically significant view of San Francisco as seen from Telegraph Hill facing to the south.  It reveals that the vigorous young city already contained at this early date several, substantial stone structures, handsome Victorian-styled wooden homes, and many masted ships at its piers.  However, the city still does bear characteristics of a western boom town with some crude wooden structures and dirt streets.  The foreground is enlivened by scenes of everyday life showing children at play and sheep grazing.  This work is known in just a single state.

Eugene Camerer (1830-1898), born in Wurtemberg, Germany, traveled to the United States in the 1840s, then making his way from New York to San Francisco in the early 1850s after the discovery of gold. After an unsuccessful attempt at mining, Camerer moved to Stockton and worked as a sign and portrait painter.  He produced several views of California, including of Stockton, Yosemite, Mt. Shasta, and another one of San Francisco.  He was one of the first European-born painters to visit and paint Yosemite. In 1862, he returned to Germany, and worked as a painter, printmaker and art teacher in Stuttgart until his death in 1898.

The San Francisco-based lithographers of this view, Kuchel & Dresel, were a remarkably productive as well as important firm in the early iconography of California.  In the brief period from 1855 to 1859, it produced some 50 views, most of them relating to California locales, including many of Gold Rush settlements "that provide incomparable records of their urban and architectural character" (Reps, p. 187). 

Works by Camerer are held in the collections of the Oakland Museum, The Society of California Pioneers, the Haggin Museum (Stockton, CA) and the Amon Carter Museum (Fort Worth, TX

Reps, J. Views & Viewmakers, no. 280, also pp. 187-88; Baird & Evans 34; Peters, California on Stone, p.147; Hughes, Edan Artists in California, 1786-1940; New York Historical Society's Dictionary of Artists in America (Groce, George C. and David H. Wallace).

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