William Hahn
William Hahn was born in Germany, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden and the Düsseldorf Academy. The student body at the Düsseldorf Academy included many Americans, and Hahn later moved to the United States to reunite with his friend, the California artist William Keith. The two artists shared a studio and were active members of the San Francisco artistic community.
What drew you to California?
In the decade following the Civil War, agriculture supplanted mining as California’s dominant industry. By 1881, four million acres of wheat (termed “grower’s gold” in the press) were under cultivation; valued at $34 million, wheat was worth twice that of the gold mined the same year. Hahn’s panoramic view of a wheat harvest in the Sacramento River Valley celebrates a modern—and mechanized—agricultural production in California, widely deemed the “cornucopia of the world.”
Gift of Mrs. Harold R. McKinnon and Mrs. Harry L. Brown