SPLENDIDE CALIFORNIE
French Artists' Impressions
of the Golden State, 1786-1900
March 1 -- June 10, 2001

France and the visual arts are inextricably intertwined in our collective imagination. No group of painters proves more popular than the French Impressionists, and Paris holds firm as the cultural capital of Europe still giving forth the beret-sporting Bohemian stereotype. It is this fascination with French art and artists that the California Historical Society aims to translate to California soil in its forthcoming exhibition Splendide Californie: French Artists’ Impressions of the Golden State, 1786-1900.

Comprised of some eighty works of art from public and private collections throughout California and other states, the exhibition includes oil paintings, works on paper, sketchbooks, manuscripts, and artifacts. Brought together for the first time in this groundbreaking exhibition, these objects span more than a century of creation by French artists working in California. After the exhibition closes at the Society, the show then travels to the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento where it will be on view from June 23 to August 12, 2001.

The contributions of French artists provide a sweeping panorama of the Golden State from the mission era to the turn of the twentieth century and include some of the most widely recognized artists in California's history. These artists created works of art depicting California’s commerce, topography, and people which today rank among the most memorable and significant records we have of California’s early history. Their accomplishments will be examined in the context of five historical periods.

The earliest period concerns early French explorers and the year 1786 when Gaspard Duché de Vancy, the first professional artist known to have painted a view of California, rendered his expedition party's reception at the Carmel Mission. California, then a little-known, exotic destination, was a port of call for several French-sponsored expeditions around the world. The earliest French artists in California were the daring navigators who risked their crews lives and their own to explore the little-known waters of the Pacific. They sought new outlets for trade, conducting scientific investigations, mapped new territories, and challenged the weakening Spanish presence in the West. French bourgeoisie of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries hungered for tales of exploration to uncharted wilds of the world. The resulting reports of scientific voyages not only satisfied this appetite but proved a source of prestige for the explorers themselves. Beautiful pictures of exotic lands and peoples greatly enhanced these written accounts. Professional draftsmen and illustrators aboard ships were instructed to execute "portraits of the natives of the different countries, their dresses, ceremonies, games, buildings, boats and vessels, and all the productions of the sea and land."

Next the exhibition examines art produced during California's Mexican era. The collapse of the Napoleonic Empire and expansion of worldwide trade encouraged many bold Frenchmen to travel far from home in quest of personal fortune. Employed as soldiers, sailors, traders, trappers, and schoolteachers, these Frenchmen came from all walks of life and arrived early in the history of the state. Some of the first foreign (non-Mexican) settlers in several cities and counties of California, including Los Angeles and San Jose, were French. Very few artists depicted California in the 1830s and 1840s, and those who did were either self-taught or military observers. French artists stand out as they all received some formal training: Jean-Jacques Vioget as an apprentice to a naval officer; Jacques Moerenhout as an apprentice in drawing and architecture; Victor Prévost as a sketch-artist for French and American news magazines; and Charles Guillou as a well-educated doctor

During the Gold Rush many French artists came to seek their fortunes in the mines but often found more success using pens and brushes than picks and shovels. After a stay in the mines long enough to "see the elephant," many French artists returned to the bustling, burgeoning city of San Francisco, a choice subject for their art. In the city, illustrators like Adrien Coquardon, sold work to local lithographic firms like Britton & Rey for reproduction as letter sheets, on which miners wrote letters home. Others, notably Edward Jump, produced lithographs that caricatured early San Francisco and its denizens. Jules Rupalley, sketched or painted for pleasure, choosing to record personal experiences in the land of gold, and Ernest Narjot created nostalgic reminders of the miner’s grand adventure long after the first great gold sources were exhausted.

The French artists who appeared in California in the 1870s—including Paul Frenzeny, Jules Tavernier, and Léon Trousset—epitomized California’s Bohemian art scene of the 1870s and 1880s. The term "Bohemian," by the mid-nineteenth century, was applied to persons with vagabond lifestyles, often the artists or students who flouted bourgeois norms. The Bohemian was thus the antithesis of the stable, hard-working and materialistic average citizen.

Freshly rediscovered after completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, the grandeur of the western states fueled the imagination of many artists. In 1873, the New York firm of Harper Brothers hired Frenzeny and Tavernier to sketch the American frontier for their magazine. During their trip across the continent, Tavernier and Frenzeny produced a remarkable visual record of life throughout the western states. When they reached California in the summer of 1874, the two artists became important members of the San Francisco art scene. San Francisco artists would undertake long sketching trips bringing back grandiose canvases of enormous dimension that captured sweeping Sierra vistas. These canvases were showcased in the palatial homes of wealthier San Franciscans. Jules Tavernier would lead a movement away from the Yosemite Valley to the artistically "undiscovered" Monterey Peninsula where he founded the area’s first art colony.

The exhibition concludes with the fin de siècle—the 1880s and 1890s—and the tremendous influence of the Parisian ateliers and art schools. A large number of California artists sailed to France to study art swelling the ranks of American art students seeking French instruction there. Among them were sons of French pioneers who had arrived with the gold rush and subsequently made California their home. These Franco-California artists revisited their French roots by studying at one of the Parisian schools and after training returned to America. Such was the experience of California-born artists like Jules Eugène Pagès, Amédée Joullin, Eugène Tanière, and Ernest de Saisset. On both continents, the Salon generated great excitement and San Francisco, by now the undisputed art center of the West, was not immune to the general infatuation with French art and training. For those Franco-Californians who remained at home like Pauline Schoenmakers, returning Franco-Californian painters became cultural links to the artistic hub. Amédée Joullin provided training in French techniques at the California School of Design, and Jules Eugène Pagès arranged to send works by some of the School of Design's budding artists to the Académie Julian's competitions. Other French artists who drifted to California and its art scene at that time included Henry Farny, Maurice Del Mué and, in Los Angeles, Paul de Longpré, the "King of Flowers."

By Claudine Chalmers with
contributions from Scott A. Shields and Marlene Smith-Baranzini