For a virtual tour of the art within the California State Capitol Museum visit: http://capitolmuseum.ca.gov/VirtualTour.aspx?content1=1278&Content2=1002&Content3=422
A Gift of Generosity and Controversy
A large statuary group titled, Columbus’ Last Appeal to Queen Isabella, has occupied a prominent position at the center of the first floor Rotunda since 1883 when Darius Ogden Mills gifted it to the State of California. In a letter read at the dedication of the statue, Mr. Mills wrote the sentiment “that the Rotunda of our State Capitol is an appropriate place for a work of art commemorating an event that had so great an influence on the destinies of the western world.”
Larkin Goldsmith Meade, an American artist, in his studio near Florence, Italy, carved the Carrara marble statue. Legrand Lockwood commissioned the sculpture for his Norwalk, Connecticut mansion.
Meade began the project in 1868 and completed it six years later. Mrs. Lockwood, after the death of her husband, sold the sculpture to D.O. Mills for $30,000.
Mills had been a prominent Sacramento banker and a long time advocate of Sacramento being established as California's Capital. He organized a fundraising effort among local merchants and secured money for the purchase of the original plot of land upon which the Capitol was to be built. His continued support for Sacramento and the Capital was reflected when he decided to gift the statuary group to the California State Capitol. At the full expense of Mills, workers prepared an appropriate pedestal on which the statue was to be placed. He also funded the cost of shipping the sculpture from the East Coast which arrived in Sacramento in the summer of 1883.
Edgar Mills, Darius Ogden Mills’ brother and a former Capitol Commissioner presided over the official dedication ceremony for the statue on December 17, 1883. During the dedication Edgar read a letter his brother had written to Governor Stoneman. In the letter Darius expressed his sentiment that the Capitol Rotunda was the appropriate place for the work of art. In reading his brother's words Edgar added his own sentiment by proclaiming “that California, more than any other state in the American Union, fulfills [Columbus’s] visions of marvelous lands beyond the setting sun.”
Not all of California’s citizens agree with Mills that a statue of Columbus is appropriate for the Capitol Rotunda. Before the restoration in the 1970s, members of the Native Sons of the Golden West and other groups suggested that the Legislature relocate the statue and replace it with another statue of an important Californian. After all, Columbus himself never made it to within a couple of thousand miles of California. During the restoration, Native American and Latino groups, critical of Columbus’s legacy in ushering in an era of genocide and colonialism for the Native Peoples of the Western Hemisphere, advocated that the statue not be returned to its former location, after its temporary removal during the restoration. Despite such criticism, the statue was returned to the Capitol Rotunda.
Reference California State Capitol Museum: http://capitolmuseum.ca.gov/VirtualTour.aspx?Content1=1282&Content2=1410&Content3=1266
