Jules Tavernier was a French-born American painter and illustrator who painted during the late 1800s. His paintings depict the life of white settlers and Native Americans in the backdrop of the beautiful North American natural landscape.

Early Life

Tavernier was born on 27 April 1844 in Paris. His father, John Taverner, was a British confectioner. His mother, Marie-Louise Rosalie Woillaume, was a French citizen. The couple changed their surname to Tavernier while they lived in France. Marie-Louise’s mother’s maiden name was Tavernier. The well-to-do couple had 4 children and Jules was the eldest of the four. When he was 3 years old, the family left for England. Jules returned to France when he was 12 years old in order to study art and live with his relatives.

In 1861, at age 17, he started training under FelixJoseph Barrias (1822–1907), a well-known French painter. For 4 years he built his artistic repertoire including painting, draftsmanship. He was such a fast learner that in a couple of years and under the atelier’s tutelage, the Salon had accepted two paintings by Jules for exhibition.

He fought in the Franco-Prussian war and lost one of his close friends and a well-known artist at the time, Henri Regnault (1843–1871). Henri was also the recipient of the Prix de Rome. Later on, he followed Allen Meason, a London engraver, to New York. He landed in New York on August 29, 1871, and thereafter, he never returned to Europe.

He accepted an assignment by Harper’s weekly to build wooden engravings with a fellow artist and French man Paul Frenzeny (1840–1902). This meant that he would travel west with his compatriot. The team made more than 100 illustrations of their experiences during the travel.

During his travels, the culture and traditions of the Native Americans, their way of life interested him greatly and many of his future paintings would be inspired by this setting. Dance in a subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake California (1878) which depicts a ceremonial dance of the natives is one of his much-acclaimed paintings. This painting has been described as a mirror to the rich and vibrant Elem Pomo culture and was treated as an attempt to expose the threat posed to that native culture which was full of vigour and vitality.

Style and Idiosyncrasies

He was a follower of the Barizonian style of painting. This style focuses on plein air and learning from nature. Early on in his career, he noticed the growing demand for paintings of the American wild west among the European public. He left for American where he travelled extensively throughout the continent. Many remembered him as a fast painter. He was capable of painting with both hands. He would sometimes use a brush, sometimes his spatulated thumb to paint pictures.

Jules Tavernier’s passion for painting made him popular among art lovers and the public alike in America. He was also bohemian in his ways. As Ida L. Brooks puts it in the April 16, 1911 issue of the San Francisco Call, “Freeborn, unconventional as the wind, ignorer of public opinion, generous, interesting, erratic, improvident, high strung—all of these things he was in the superlative.” He was easily excitable and was child-like in enthusiasm. Many times Tavernier would burst out words in both English and French when speaking about a subject that interested him deeply.

Life in America

Tavernier arrived in America in the year 1872 in New York with another artist friend, Allen Mesom. He worked for Lesli’s Illustrated Paper, Harper’s Weekly, and other papers.

In the summer of 1873, he accepted a commission to paint more paintings by traveling to the western parts of America. He was accompanied by another artist, Paul Frenzeny. They traveled through many southern and western states of American including Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah. They finally arrived in California. During their travels, they many sketches of what they saw in their travels such as native Americans, the plains, animals, and locomotives. Back at Harper’s these paintings were in high demand and they were paid handsomely for them. Some of his published sketches were Sioux Sun Dance and Shooting Antelopes from a Railroad Tram in Colorado.

Unfortunately, Frenzheny and he had an argument over money which ended their partnership. Soon after on 24th February 1877, Tavernier proposed to a girl called Lizzie Fulton and married her. This marriage lasted for less than a decade.

In an interesting account of Jules Tavernier from the time, an acquaintance of Tavernier, painter Joseph Dwight Strong’s girlfriend, Isobel “Belle” Osbourne makes amusing reading. It commented about how Jules was shorter than his wife and wore a Napoleonic mustache and spoke with a French accent although he had been living in America for a while then. His wife, Lizzie, by the account of this person, was tall, dark with an aquiline nose and fine eyes. Some say that to accommodate for this disparity in height, a painting of the couple at the time done by Tavernier shows his wife perched on a tree holding an umbrella while he gazes up at her.

The account also mentions how they end up fighting over Tavernier’s debts.

Tavernier lived and painted Native American people. His paintings now provide us with a glimpse of the colorful life of the then Native American communities in the Californian region. Tavernier painted the dances, people, traditions, and rituals with reverence. These paintings give us a view into the settler’s perspective of the natives and are very valuable historically.

Later on, Tavernier left for the south of the American subcontinent. Towards the end of his career, he ended up in Hawaii at the behest of his friends the Strongs. He left San Francisco for Hawaii on the ship leaving his debtors unpaid and his rocky marriage to Lizzie.

He landed in Hawaii on the wharf of Honolulu on 23rd December 1884 on the Alameda. The paper, the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, reported that event. It said that he visited the islands for “studies” and he hoped to visit other islands of the group during this stay there. He was already well known in Hawaii due to his exhibitions in New York, Sacramento, and New Orleans.

During his stay in Hawaii, he would work with oil and pastel landscapes of the volcanoes. Due to his good friendships with the Strongs, Joe, and Jules shared a great love for art. They would use the beauty of the Hawaiian landscape to their advantage and would spend the entire day painting and all evening drinking. Many of Tavernier’s work from his time in Hawaii was similar to impressionism to what they had studied earlier in Europe. Some of the most prolific paintings of the outdoors were painted during this time. They sold their paintings to patrons to make money. In order to drum up more trade, they started a club called “The Pallete Club“. They gave interviews to journalists and gave painting lessons to the interested public.

More than any other interest, they loved to travel neighboring islands to see and paint volcanoes. During their travels painting volcanoes, they made the acquaintance of another painter, Howard Hitchcock, who was still a budding artist at the time.

A rough itinerary of the painters during this time is as follows:

• On Jan 6, 1885, they left for the island of Hawai’i on the Kinau.
• They stopped at the Kona side – sketched heiau at Kawaihae.
• They travelled around Hilo and painted Rainbow Falls and theWailuku River.
• They went to Kilauea.
• They got back to the Nu’uanu studio and painted all through February.
• Later on they visited Chinatown and immigration depot where they sketched workers as they disembarked.
• The sketched sumo matches at depot and black and white studies sales at Harper’s.
• At night they painted the Diamond Head and fishermen by torchlight.
• In march they had a joint collection.
• They left on March 4 by the Kinau to Maui. They sketched on the plantation at Spreckelsville near Wailuku.
• During this time they painted the volcano Haleakala.
• In July that year, Tavernier exhibited View of the New Lake of Fire by Moonlight and Bird’s-eye View of the Crater.

Sometime during their travels, King David Kalakaua commissioned a painting by Joe Strong. Strong completed the commission with the well-known “Japanese Laborers at Sprecklesville Plantation.”

His landscape paintings show his admiration for the island’s natural beauty with many of them featuring these active volcanoes. His paintings form part of the Volcano School of Hawaii, like the Hudson School of Art New York.

Tavernian died on 18th May, 1889 at the very young age of 44. The Bohemian Club of San Francisco shipped a nine-foot granite obelisk which arrived on the Consuelo on December 3rd, 1890. This was put on Tavernian’s grave.

Notable work

Dance in a subterranean roundhouse at Clear Lake, California

Oneofhis most famous and celebrated artworks is Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California (1878). The painting shows a ceremonial dance, the mfom Xe of the Elem Pomo. mfom Xe or the people dance is performed in an underground roundhouse. The Elem Pomo people are the ancestral custodians of the Clear Lake region of California. This painting gives us a rare glimpse into the cultures of these people as seen by white settlers in the region.

Jules Tavernier was accompanied by other settlers and business investors, such as Mexican-born Tiburcio Parrot y Ochoa, a banker, and patron of Tavernier’s paintings, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, a French military officer Comte Gabriel Louis de Turenne d’Aynac, who was traveling with Rothschild.

Parrot had invested in a mercury mining company in the area of Clear Lake. This had resulted in mercury poisoning of the water in the neighbouring regions which later affected the local population.