"China Camp Village from the Bluffs" Sold
30" x 40" by Kathleen Elsey
This painting was done in the winter at China Camp, in Marin County. It is a beautiful little beach, and usually a calm escape from the more windy beaches of the Pacific Coast and the San Francisco Bay. I have painted here in every season, every time of day, and every viewpoint. And I will continue to go back and paint this village.
After the gold rush and the completion of the transcontinental railroad, demand for Chinese Laborers abated. The McNears leased some land to a man who sublet it to Chinese shrimp fishermen. Most of these fishermen had come from Canton in the maritime province of Keantung, China. By the 1880’s, China Camp was one of many coastal fishing villages in the bay area with nearly 500 residents. San Pablo bay’s mud flats provided an ideal grass-shrimping location.
China Camp’s population began to decline after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 182, which forbade new Chinese laborers to come to the U.S. In 1924 Quan Hock came from San Francisco to run a seaside general store. His grandson, Frank Quan, still lives at China Camp. |
