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Golden Mountains/Golden Fields by Daniel Galvez
Photo CreditCarol M. Highsmith Photography
Golden Mountains/Golden Fields
Photo CreditCarol M. Highsmith Photography

Golden Mountains/Golden Fields

Artist
Year1999
Classification painting
Medium oil on canvas
Dimensions84 x 144 in. (213.4 x 365.8 cm)
Credits Commissioned through the Art in Architecture Program
Fine Arts Collection
U.S. General Services Administration
Location
  • Because the Sacramento Courthouse stands on the site of the city's earliest Chinese community, artist Daniel Galvez focused the subject of his mural on the history of nineteenth and twentieth century Chinese immigration to California.  His composition blends images of traditional Chinese life and landscape, views of early Sacramento and the delta, and portraits of contemporary Chinese-Americans.  At the lower left corner of the mural, Galvez painted the ceiling of a Chinese temple to represent a cultural point of origin.  In the mural's opposite corner shines the dome of the California State Capitol in Sacramento, symbol of the "golden mountain" that attracted many Chinese pioneers to the city in the 1850s.  The black stone marker near the painting's center references the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay, and alludes to the hardships that many Chinese immigrants faced upon entering California.  The multiple family groups, which are dressed in both Chinese and Western clothing, stress the central role that family life continues to play in the lives of Chinese-Americans.