The California Gold Rush brought fortune seekers from around the world to isolated mining camps around the Sierra Nevadas. Occasionally, the aroma of the next meal would entice some of the local wildlife to visit a forty-niner camp as well. Most would-be miners had never spent an evening in the wilderness before heading to California, so encountering a hungry or angry California Grizzly was a first. The only certainty here is that a tumultuous uproar is about to occur, the outcome of which could fall in anyone’s favor.

This painting is one of three that Situ introduced at the Autry’s 2010 Masters of the American West Show for which he received the Gene Autry Memorial Award. Mian Situ’s epic depictions of California’s “Eastward Expansion” sit side by side with the Westward Expansion works of Moran, Bierstadt and Russell in both their historical importance and artistic greatness.