Artist: Jules Tavernier
Date: 1878
Size: 122 x 184 cm
Museum: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, United States Of America)
Technique: Oil On Canvas
In the 1870s, French-born and -trained artist Jules Tavernier settled in San Francisco, where he received his most important commission from Tiburcio Parrott, the city’s leading banker. During an 1876 visit from his Parisian business partner Baron Edmond de Rothschild and the baron’s traveling companion Count Gabriel Louis de Turenne, Parrott was able to obtain entry to a ceremonial dance of the Elem Pomo known as the mfom Xe (people dance) in an underground Xe-xwan (roundhouse) at Clear Lake, California. Tavernier spent two years working on this tour de force, a composition with nearly one hundred figures, including Elem Pomo dancers and musicians as well as non-Native onlookers, notably Parrott, Rothschild, and Turenne. He rendered the dimly lit interior—its circular shape symbolic of the life-sustaining form of a basket—with brilliant technical finesse. While the painting suggests the rich vitality of Elem Pomo culture, it also exposes the threat posed by White settlers, including Parrott, who was then operating a toxic mercury mine on the Elem Pomo’s ancestral homelands. Designated a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1990, the mine continues to pollute the land and water of the present-day Elem Indian Colony, where the community resiliently sustains their cultural practices and ceremonies, including the mfom Xe and the Xe-xwan.
Artist |
|
|---|---|
Download |
|
Permissions |
Free for non commercial use. See below. |
 |
This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. However - you may not use this image for commercial purposes and you may not alter the image or remove the watermark. This applies to the United States, Canada, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.
|
Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years. This image may
not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the
