Famed 1878 painting returns to SF and inspires new look at Native American art

This one painting would have been enough to command attention, installed among the de Young Museum’s American art collection. It was back in San Francisco for the first time since it was completed in 1878 by French-born artist Jules Tavernier in his studio, originally near Portsmouth Square.

“Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California” is both personal and dramatic, conveying a sacred cultural ceremony of the Elem Pomo tribe. The dancers, lit by a skylight, are silhouetted against figures in brightly colored garb, with scores of more people detailed in the shadows. Compared to the raft of “Indian paintings” by European-trained artists, it is remarkably intimate.

But the painting, 4 feet tall and 6 feet wide, is only the beginning. It’s a window into the past and present and the centerpiece of a new exhibit “Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo,” on view through April 17.

Held privately for years, the painting and other artifacts were displayed at New York’s Metropolitan Museum early in 2021. The de Young curators expanded the exhibit to include more Pomo basketry and regalia. Some are from the 1860s, some from recent years. They also focused on Elem Pomo people who are living, working and making art today.

Robert Geary, an Elem Pomo cultural leader and regalia maker who lives in Clear Lake Oaks, first saw Tavernier’s painting on exhibit in New York. He became one of the de Young exhibit’s co-presenters, along with Dry Creek Pomo scholar Sherrie Smith-Ferri and Eastern Pomo artist and curator Meyo Marrufo.

“If people are going to talk about Pomo people, they should learn from Pomo people,” Geary said in an interview. He hopes exhibit visitors will realize that the Pomo exist in the present, not just the past. There is an Elem Pomo roundhouse at the site of the roundhouse Tavernier painted in 1878.

“They’re still here,” Geary said.

The exhibit includes Tavernier’s paintings, pastels and sketches from his journey across America (initially as a kind of visual reporter for New York-based Harper’s Weekly magazine.) There are also photographs by Edward Curtis and Eadweard Muybridge, and a painting by Mendocino County’s Grace Carpenter Hudson.

Putting this artwork in context are more than 40 pieces of Pomo basketry and regalia (including a ceremonial headdress made by Geary from crow feathers in 2020.) The focus of the de Young exhibit — which includes a brief film with contemporary interviews — is on the Pomo people themselves.

“’Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo’ is a timely exhibition that brings alternative perspectives to narratives that have dominated the interpretation of American history and art from this period,” said Thomas Campbell, director of San Francisco’s Fine Arts Museums that include the de Young. Insights from the Elem Pomo community, he said, show the impact of Western expansion and highlight “the resilience and significant heritage of this community.”

“I think at the de Young we are telling a larger narrative of American art,” said exhibit curator Christina Hellmich, who worked with the Metropolitan Museum’s Elizabeth Kornhauser. At the de Young, there’s a dedicated space for its Native American collection on the first floor. The Tavernier/Elem Pomo exhibit is integrated with the historic American art galleries on the second floor.

Hellmich noted that paintings by artists such as Thomas Cole, nearby, depict “open landscapes, welcoming people to the West.” Tavernier, who avoided grand vistas, takes viewers deep into the region.

“We’re all trying to expand the narrative,” Hellmich said, referring to the exhibit’s wide-ranging display and the involvement of Pomo people. “A painting like this can stir up such incredible conversations.”

The Elem Pomo people who worked on the exhibit point out an irony of Tavernier’s roundhouse painting.

It was commissioned by San Francisco banker Tiburcio Parrott for his French business partner Edmond de Rothschild. Those two men and a French military officer are depicted among the roundhouse spectators. They are outsiders — watching a dance meant to protect the Elem Pomo from outsiders. Not far away was the Sulphur Bank quicksilver mine which Parrott owned, where mercury residue would contaminate a wide swath of the Pomo’s Clear Lake territory.

Curators call “Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse” Tavernier’s masterwork. But more works on display show his gift for pictorial storytelling: “Yosemite (Forest Fire in Moonlit Landscape)” and “Artist’s Reverie, Dreams at Twilight.” His scenes suggest theatrical melodrama, his palette Technicolor hues. One San Francisco newspaper said his paintings showed “a little of the natural with a good deal of the fantastical.”

Tavernier’s life was equally dramatic. He and his wife Lizzie entertained Oscar Wilde in San Francisco during the writer’s lecture tour. Yet Tavernier’s “drinking and partying, quarreling and increasing debts” ended many relationships, according to a biography by the Society of California Pioneers.

He and his wife fled to Hawaii in 1884, where Tavernier found an even more dramatic subject: fiery orange eruptions of the Kilauea volcano. He turned out about 100 of these paintings, for which he is best known. He died in 1889 at the age of 45.

Tavernier’s life story is in the background of the exhibit, which brings insight to the Pomo people’s and Clear Lake area’s history and culture. A Pomo wickerwork seed beater, circa 1865, is a reminder of the reliance on the natural world: It is made from willow, hazel and oak shoots, split wild grapevine and dogbane. A basket tray includes roots from sedge and bulrush plants.

Robert Geary, the Elem Pomo ceremonial roundhouse leader, pointed out that more recent artifacts in the exhibit directly relate to those in the 1878 painting. “It’s a validation for the tribal community, that what we’re doing now connects with our way of life 140-150 years ago.”

When Geary first encountered the painting on exhibit in New York, he said, “I was just in awe. I think I stood there for an hour, looking at all the details, how the roundhouse was put together, the ceremonies that we are still doing today.”

Geary knew that in the 1870s there were two ceremonial leaders, and one was an ancestor. “But to me,” he said, referring to nearly 100 figures in the painting, “all of those people are my relatives.”

‘JULES TAVERNIER AND THE ELEM POMO’

Through: April 17

Where: de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco; hours are 9:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday

COVID safety precautions: Advance timed tickets recommended; proof of vaccination not required by masks must be worn in the museum; social distancing is strongly encouraged

Admission: $15, free for Bay Area residents on Saturday; 415-750-3600, deyoung.famsf.org