Selfies II: Frenzeny and Tavernier

 

Paul Tavernier: Big Medicine Man, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts

At first glance, the watercolor Big Medicine Man resembles Catlin's frontispiece of himself painting the Mandan Chief Mah To Toh Pah: both show an artist portraying Native Americans, in this case, a Chief, his wife and his horse, while other Native Americans stand behind him,looking

Catlin Painting Mah To-Toh Pa

on.  This one is from another, later time period, and was not done by the painter Jules Tavernier himself, but by his partner and fellow artist, Paul Frenzeny. 

 Tavernier and Frenzeny were two illustrators of French origin, who spent most of their lives in the New World and beyond.  For a year (1873-4), they traveled together around what would soon become the continental United States, under a contract from Harper's Magazine, recording the expansion of Euro-American domination during that period.  

 

Their journey is chronicled and analyzed in detail by art historian Claudine Chalmers in her book Chronicling the West for Harper's (2013).  The two men were given passes to ride rapidly expanding rail lines, but also made many side-trips by any transportation they could muster.  Their modus operandi was to prepare their compositions for monochromatic line drawings, transferred by pencil in reverse on thin boxwood blocks-- small ones riveted together, which were then shipped back to New York, to be engraved by Harper's crew of professional wood engravers in pieces, then put back together to be printed along with a moveable-type text, often their own commentary.  Altogether, they produced a hundred of these illustrations that Harper's published between 1873 and 1876, as well as sketches and watercolors for their own use and sale.

 

The growing America they recorded was of a country of rapid expansion, as European and Post Civil-War Americans "won the west," at a time when most of the enduring legends of such settlements were being made.  Beginning with European immigrants arriving in New York, and the hardships of trekking west on uncomfortable trains and other means of transportation, they recorded factories in the east, unrest among coal miners, and as they progressed, what new settlers were doing. They showed Texas cowboys in East Texas on great cattle drives, railroad construction, primitive meteorologists with rudimentary prediction tools in isolated locations, ore smelting, stagecoach supply outposts, and many new towns being built along the new railroad lines.  Some of the things they drew were things of the moment that are now forgotten, such as a lone cowhand doing his job on horseback shading himself with an umbrella, incipient railroad towns being built, the inhabitants living in roofed dugouts until more durable housing could be constructed, and an unusual culture of gypsy-like drifters, called "pilgrims," who migrated back and forth between Arkansas and Texas, doing seasonal work. 

 

There were other, less laudable things too-- ghost towns, hastily built and hastily abandoned when the anticipated railroad line never came; deserted, trashed played-out mining camps, a leadup to a lynching, and the wholesale slaughtering of bison, both by professional hunters, and random railroad passengers killing vast amounts of them by shooting at passing herds out of train windows.

It was also the period of continuing conflict between whites and Native Americans, and the wholesale destruction of the latter's way of life.  Tavernier was fortunate be the only white visitor to witness and record the three-day Sundance festival at Red Cloud Agency--the last of its kind--in June 1874.  It was a coming-of-age ceremony comparable to the Mandan O-Keepa rituals that Catlin had been privileged to witness, but the very title of the scene by Harper's, " Indian Sun Dance–Young Bucks Proving Their Endurance by Self-Torture," speaks of the patronizing attitude of the easterners who would read about it in the artists' dispatches. Tavernier and Franzeny also recorded the degradation of dispossessed Native Americans at trading posts, some bringing in goods to trade, others hanging out at railroad stations and begging, to be ogled by American travelers.

Like Catlin and Bodmer, Frenzeny's portrait of his partner in action was apart from the artists' official assignment, in this case the illustrations for Harper's, but a personal comment of their roles as artists. Frenzeny's watercolor shows Tavernier in a suit, vest, tie and hat, sitting on a folding stool working on a tiny, stretched canvas.  His subjects are formally posed further back, in front of some low white cliffs with treetops behind them. They appear to be clad in buckskin ceremonial garments, and the chief wears a war bonnet. The Native Americans clustered around the white-suited artist wear a motley collection of garments (Chalmers has identified one in the foreground's dress as Cherokee).  Their expressions range from wonder to curiosity to anger, and the picture's title "Big Medicine Man," along with their poses and the raggedy Native American boy exploring Tavernier's paintbox, imply a more "primitive" social state than the light-skinned, bearded painter.  In other words, they reinforce the mid-nineteenth attitude of Manifest Destiny in the spirit of the Harper's series itself.

 

When their contract was up, both men went on to San Francisco, where the lingered awhile among the society of bohemian artists there and in the bay area.  Tavernier spent time with other Native American tribes, including the Elem Pomo community of northern California, got to know many of them well, and made watercolor sketches of ceremonies and other activities.  He had intended eventually to return to Europe via Japan, but ended his life in Hawaii, where he painted volcanoes and died of alcoholism at forty five.

 

Frenzeny too lingered awhile in San Francisco, becoming fascinated with its Chinatown. He continued his association as a traveling illustrator for Harper's which took him to many places, from the Yukon to the north, Mexico and Guatemala in the south, and subsequently to China and Siberia, returning eventually returned to London. He also illustrated at lease seven books, for which he's more remembered today, including the first English edition of Anna Karenina  and some for The Jungle Book.

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The best authority on Tavernier and Frenzeny is Claudine Chalmers, Chronicling the West For Harper's. Coast to Coast with Frenzeny and Tavernier.  Norman, University of Oklahoma Press 2013.  Chalmers continues to publish on Tavernier.

 

For Jules Tavernier's subsequent life in California and Hawaii, see "Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo" TheMetropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Summer, 2021, https://www.metmuseum.org/met-publications/jules-tavernier-and-the-elem-pomo (downloadable).

Selfies: Bodmer and Catlin

 NOTE: For some reason I can't add posts to jbswest, so these new posts will be found here under jbsmusings.

George Catlin: "The Author painting a chief at the base of the Rocky Mountains"
frontispiece from Manners, Customs and Condition of the North American Indian (1841) 

As 19th century Euro-Americans set out to conquer America west of the Mississippi, visual artists moved with them and recorded the "wild" that remained (all the Native Americans who were there first were considered part of the wilderness).   Among the earliest were Titian Peale and Samuel Seymour, who went with the exploration journeys of Major Stephen Long of 1819-20.  Peale and Seymour recorded landscapes, flora and fauna and views of Native American tribes in their environments.

Visual artists who concentrated more on portraits of individual tribal members began their work in the 1830's were George Catlin and Karl Bodmer.  Both were on a mission to record tribal notables in their native dress and environments; both were men of their times in their outlooks and opinions.  Both believed that native cultures were doomed to be subsumed in the "conquering" of the west by superior European-Americans --a term that would be called "Manifest Destiny" in the next decade. To Europeans it was in part an outgrowth of Romanticism, a fascination with the tragic idea of vanishing "primitive" exotic cultures. An extension of this romantic ideal was the visual recording of the artist himself in the "unspoiled wilderness."

Both the American, Catlin (on his first trips west), and the Swiss Bodmer on his only journey to frontier America accompanying an expedition financed by Prince Maximilian of Wied zu Wied, covered the area of the northern Great Plains at about the same time, Catlin from 1832 through 1836, and Bodmer between 1833 and 1834.  They are best remembered now for their portrayals of the Mandan and Hidatsa tribal members and their activities and ceremonies--which took on romantic tragic overtones in 1837, when they were virtually wiped out by smallpox, brought in by white colonizers. 

Prince Maximilian, in the manner of his friend and mentor, Alexander von Humboldt, was an explorer and naturalist. In 1815-17, he had already been in Brazil accompanied by two German naturalists, collecting specimens and visiting and chronicling Amazonian tribes.  In 1832, he embarked on his two-year expedition to North America.  This time he brought along two associates, his valet and hunting companion, David Dreidoppel, and Karl Bodner, to make visual records of what they saw. 

For Bodmer, then in his early twenties, this trip proved to be the adventure of his life.  He was already a skilled painter and engraver.  This New World journey was the only one he made.  He returned to Germany, and subsequently, he would emigrate to France and join the Barbizon painters, with considerable success, though he had to resort to commercial illustration to make ends meet.

 

Catlin, self-taught, made a career of his portrayals of native Americans, subsequently including Central and South American tribes, and taking his artistic product on Barnum-like traveling shows, in both the United States and Europe. In Europe, he took advantage of touring Native American tribal dancers to augment his exhibitions, and when they weren't available, he dressed family members in Native American clothing and gear that he had acquired on his journeys. At a time when an artistic career had become an issue of free enterprise, both men capitalized on their North American paintings and sketches to enhance their reputations and more importantly, to earn themselves a living.  For Catlin, it was part of his modus operandi; for the more reluctant Bodmer, eager to resume his painting career as a European landscape and wildlife artist, it was in obligation to his patron. 

In an age of developing mass media, 81 of Bodmer's paintings were reproduced as aquatints in Europe in a two-volume account penned by the Prince called Maximilian, Prince of Weid's Travels in the Interior of North America (1841), first in German, and later in French and English.  500 of Catlin's sketches and paintings were gathered in a collection called the Indian Gallery, which he attempted to sell to the American government.  When that didn't work, he took the Gallery on tour to London and later the European continent.  Unfortunately, much of this collection was confiscated and stored to cover debts, so he recreated 300 works from his field sketches, naming it the Cartoon Collection.  Catlin too took his work to the public via the print medium. In the same year that the Maximilian/Bodmer volume came out, his Manners, Customs and Condition of the North American Indian, also in two volumes with 300 of his works reproduced as engravings and the text written by himself was published in England.

 

Both of these works contain a print that was not among the Native American portraits: they are self-portraits of each artist "in action" on their painting journeys.  The frontispiece of Catlin's book, captioned "The Author painting a chief at the base of the Rocky Mountains," shows him in the act of painting Mah-To-Toh-Pah (Four Bears), the second Mandan Chief, dressed in the same ceremonial outfit and in the same pose as the portrait that graced the Indian Gallery (the chief later gifted Catlin that shirt).  Four Bears assumes the stance of a baroque European King--the famous Rigaud portrait of Louis XIV comes to mind--which is being echoed in his image on canvas.  Surrounding them are tribesmen, with six of them reclining in the foreground, once more in a traditional Baroque manner.  Behind them are two tipis, and some tall, cypress-like trees.  Catlin, with his deerstalker cap and his pristine buckskin outfit, one foot braced on his equally pristine easel, delicately works on the image.

 Art historians have been quick to point out that the Mandans lived in fixed lodges, not tipis, and others have been equally insistent that as a frontispiece for the many Native American tribes contained in the book, this was intentional, and for the average reader, tipis would have been just fine. The title, "The Author painting a Chief at the base of the Rocky Mountains," is equally a stretch: no mountains are shown.

George Catlin: "Catlin Painting Ma Toh To Pah," from the Cartoon Collection
Courtesy National Gallery of Art Washington, DC;  oil on card

Catlin also produced a sketchier watercolor of the same scene with no tipis, but a generic Plains riverside setting, the easel constructed like a tipi shaped support of three tree branches, and the canvas casually flapping on a ruder support. He is surrounded by a similar crowd of tribespeople, but this time with more women and two small dogs replacing two of the foreground recliners, which echoes a written account by Catlin of making the same picture. The onlookers in this version are almost like cartoon figures, reflecting the same humor brought to many of Catlin's other sketches. This version is generally dated around 1860, when Catlin was reproducing his work for the Cartoon Gallery.

 By 1846, the Mandans themselves were gone, virtually eliminated by the smallpox epidemic in 1837.  Catlin himself was in London, exhibiting his Indian Gallery and still attempting to get it sold to the American government or the newly established Smithsonian Institution.  This self-portrait is really Catlin promoting himself and his lifework, trying to make a living, and showing himself in action at his craft.

Karl Bodmer, "The Travelers Meeting With Minatarre Indians," Maximilian, Prince of Weid's Travels In The Interior of North America (1841)

Bodmer's print shows the artist, but in a somewhat different context.  The setting is outside Fort Clark, where the party wintered in 1833-34, and the three members of Maximilian's party are depicted meeting Minatarre (or Hidatsa) tribal members for the first time. To the left is a local guide and interpreter, usually identified as Toussaint Charbonneau, the same man whose late wife, Sacagawea, had been the indigenous interpreter for the Lewis and Clark expedition thirty years previously.  Here he gestures towards the Europeans, Maximilian in a green coat and hat in the colored version of the print, with Bodmer beside him, wearing a top hat.  Between and behind the two is Dreidoppel, wearing a cap.  Art historians have identified one of the Hidatsa as Ahschüpsa Masihichsi, who was also portrayed individually by Bodmer.

Like Catlin's self-portrait, there are no field sketches for this composition, and the print is generally accepted as a representation made after the trip and inserted as an illustration made especially for Maximilian's publication.

Presumably Bodmer made it for the book, a project he would work on for Maximilian for a decade after the expedition's return and too expensive, in the end to offer the Archduke a profit.  The three explorers, like Catlin are dressed in their best--more symbolically than likely--they had already been on the road for a year. Bodmer presents himself as one of a group expedition rather than an individual artist, and there's no indication of the role he played as its visual chronicler; rather he bristles with weapons and appears to hold a pipe.  The focus is all on his boss, the Prince, the only one in green and immaculate white trousers in the colored version of the print.

Though in the present day, Bodmer is considered the more talented as a portrayer of vanishing tribal chiefs than his American counterpart, his real artistic interest lay in the landscapes and wildlife he depicted rather than his human subjects, a fascination he would retain in his later career. 

                  

Neither artist really considered their images as independent creative art in the Romantic sense; both were doing imagery for different purposes--both to document a region of America that would quickly disappear, but in Bodmer's case to chronicle both the land and the people who inhabited it, and Catlin to record the people who vanished within his own lifetime.

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There are numerous studies of both Catlin and Bodmer's images on the internet: here are three of the best:

For Catlin's Frontispiece, see https://humanitiesusa.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/george-catlin-catlin-painting-the-portrait-of-mah-to-toh-pa—mandan-c-1861-1869/

For Catlin's Cartoon Collection: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.50492.html#overview Overview

For Bodmer, see https://maximilian-bodmer.org/about/maximilian-bodmer-expedition/

There are also two excellent monographs on these artists:

Catlin: George Gurney and Therese That Heyman (eds.) George Catlin and His Indian Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, W.W. Norton & Company,  third printing, 2008.

Bodmer: William H. Goetzmann, David C. Hunt, Marsha Gallagher and William J. Orr, Karl Bodmer's America, Joslyn Art Museum & University of Nebraska Press, 1984.