(soft piano playing)
- In this gallery,
we highlight some of the most iconic landscapes
of the American West.
And they tell a particular story--
of the settlement of the land in the 19th century.
But they do leave certain stories out in their depiction
of pure wilderness landscape.
We're so thrilled to add a painting to the gallery
that tells a very different story.
The Parisian-born artist Jules Tavernier
completed this painting in 1878,
early enough in the history of the American West
to show the Pomo people still on the land
that they had resided on for centuries
around Clear Lake, California, just north of San Francisco.
He was fascinated by the architecture
of the underground roundhouse that they had built.
What at first seems like this very dark and mysterious scene,
within just a few minutes,
reveals all of this detail to you.
To the left you see the sacred mountain, Mount Konocti,
which the Pomo Indians revered.
The fire below illuminates some of the elders,
who are dressed in elaborate costume
and are dancing around a painted pole.
In the center of the roundhouse ceiling is an opening,
which allows the smoke from the fire below to exit,
but it also allows a spotlight to descend on the central scene.
You can see two young men dancing
and blowing bird whistles
in a rarely seen sacred coming-of-age ceremony.
And then he fills the area with approximately a hundred figures.
You see women lined up in long, decorative dresses
and very elaborate headdresses
made of flicker feathers and shellwork.
Tavernier paints thickly applied flashes of color
to illuminate the shells and beads.
You feel like you're part of this sacred ceremony yourself.
(soft rhythmic piano playing)
And, finally, one of the greatest surprises
of the composition is that as you look across the faces
of the Pomo Indian tribespeople,
you see buried amongst them several white faces.
You begin to realize that they represent the white visitors--
the San Francisco banker Tiburcio Parrott,
who has commissioned this work,
standing next to his new friend and emerging business partner,
Edmond de Rothschild,
as well as other members of their entourage.
There they are in the midst of this sacred,
rarely seen ceremony, paying witness to it.
In hindsight,
the great irony of this composition
is that here we have the two white men
who would acquire these lands,
buying the mineral rights to the lands
and eventually moving the Pomo Indians off the lands
that they had inhabited for centuries.
So it is really symbolic of the story of the 19th century,
which is rarely portrayed in any landscape
painted by a major artist.
But here, we have it
in this remarkable work by Jules Tavernier.
(soft piano playing)