Background
Ernest Étienne Narjot was born in on December 25, 1826, in Saint-Malo, France.
Ernest Étienne Narjot was born in on December 25, 1826, in Saint-Malo, France.
He was brought up in Paris and studied art there before coming to California in 1849 to join the California Gold Rush.
He produced many fine paintings of California landscape, in particular of life in the Gold Country. He spent three unproductive years in the Gold Country, panning for gold at Fosters Bar on the Yuba River. In 1851, he joined a French mining expedition to Sonora, Mexico.
He continued mining, painting and breeding horses in the area but eventually returned to San Francisco with his family in 1865 and set up a studio at 610 Clay Street.
By the 1880s, he had established himself as one of California"s foremost painters. In the early 1890s, Narjot was commissioned to paint the ceiling at Leland Stanford, Junior."s tomb at Stanford University and, while working there, paint splashed in his eyes.
As a result, Narjot was blinded in one eye and his health began to deteriorate. By 1897, his economic circumstances had declined to a point that he was forced to move to a tenement.
In response, thirty prominent California artists, among them Thomas Hill, Amédée Joullin, William Keith and Arthur Mathews, came to his aid with a benefit sale of their work.
He died in San Francisco on August 24, 1898.