Jules Tavernier (painter)

Jules Wilhelm Tavernier (27 April 1844 – 18 May 1889) was a French-American painter, draftsman, illustrator, and member of Hawaii’s Volcano School.

Jules Tavernier
Undated photo, likely ca. 1877 or later.
Born	(1844-04-27)27 April 1844 Paris, France
Died	18 May 1889(1889-05-18) (aged 45) Honolulu, Hawaii
Nationality	French
Known for	Painting
Movement	Volcano School

Life and career

Tavernier was born on 27 April 1844 in Paris to John Tavernier, an English confectioner from Plymouth, and his wife whom he married two years prior, Marie-Louise Rosalie Woillaume (born in Paris). Tavernier's parents and siblings would later move to England to join the English side of his family, but he chose to remain in Paris with his French relatives.

He studied with the French painter, Félix-Joseph Barrias, but left France in the 1870s, never to return.

Tavernier was employed as an illustrator by Harper's Magazine, which sent him, along with Paul Frenzeny, on a year-long coast-to-coast sketching tour in 1873.^[1] He arrived in San Francisco in the summer of 1874, but soon traveled south and founded an art colony on the Monterey Peninsula.^[2] In 1874, Tavernier came upon the tavern owned by his compatriot Jules Simoneau. Briefly, he established a studio at the Girandin Hotel (now called Stevenson House). In November 1875, Tavernier, alongside Walter Paris, leased space on Alvarado Street, establishing the first dedicated artist studio in Monterey. Tavernier's connection with Monterey led to his marriage to Lizzie Fulton in San Francisco in February 1877, whom he initially met in Monterey in 1876.^[3]

Eventually, he continued westward to Hawaii, where he worked as a landscape painter. He was fascinated by Hawaii’s erupting volcanoes—a subject that was to pre-occupy him for the rest of his life, which was spent in Hawaii, Canada, and the western United States. Tavernier died from alcoholism on 18 May 1889 in Honolulu, Hawaii.^[4]

Memorial to Tavernier by members of the Bohemian Club, Oahu Cemetery, Honolulu

Tavernier's students included D. Howard Hitchcock, Amédée Joullin, Charles Rollo Peters and Manuel Valencia.^{[citation needed]}

Public collections holding paintings by Tavernier include the Brigham Young University Museum of Art (Provo, Utah), Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (Colorado Springs, Colorado), Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento), Gilcrease Museum (Tulsa, Oklahoma), Hearst Art Gallery (Saint Mary's College of California, Moraga, California), Honolulu Museum of Art, Isaacs Art Center (Kamuela, Hawaii), Museum of Nebraska Art (Kearney, Nebraska), Oakland Museum of California, San Diego Museum of Art, Stark Museum of Art (Orange, Texas), Society of California Pioneers (San Francisco, California), Washington County Museum of Fine Arts (Hagerstown, Maryland), and Yosemite Museum (Yosemite National Park).^{[citation needed]}

In 2014, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California, held an exhibition of more than 100 works by Tavernier, the first career retrospective of his work, accompanied by a catalog entitled Jules Tavernier: Artist & Adventurer. After the Crocker, the exhibition moved to the Monterey Museum of Art.^[5][6]

From 16 August to 28 November 2021, the Metropolitan Museum of Art held an exhibition, Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo^[7], that explored Tavernier’s cultural exchange with the Indigenous Pomo community of Elem at Clear Lake in Northern California^[8] The show traveled to the de Young Museum^[9], Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco from 18 December 2021 to 17 April 2022.  The exhibit was the subject of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin.

Selected works

• 
  A Balloon in Mid-Air, 1875, oil on canvas, Private collection
• 
  The Pioneer, 1877, oil on canvas, Society of California Pioneers
• 
  White Man's Weapon, 1880, oil on canvas, Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas
• 
  Marin Sunset in Back of Petaluma, early 1880s, oil on canvas, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California
• 
  Maui Sugar Plantation, 1885, oil on wood panel
• 
  Wailuku Falls, Hilo, c. 1886, pastel on paper, Honolulu Museum of Art
• 
  Sunrise Over Diamond Head, 1888, oil on canvas, Honolulu Museum of Art
• 
  Kilauea by Moonlight, 1889, oil on canvas, Isaacs Art Center
• 
  Volcano at Night, late 1880s, oil on canvas, Honolulu Museum of Art