Since 1922, The Magazine ANTIQUES has been America’s premier publication on the fine and decorative arts, architecture, preservation, and interior design.
Print by Tavernier and Frenzeny, courtesy of Claudine Chalmers and Exhibit Envoy
In 1873, President Ulysses S. Grant had recently signed legislation designating Yellowstone the first National Park. The Jesse James Gang conducted their first successful train robbery and only 37 states made up the United States of America. In between the 34 eastern states and the three western states of Nevada, California and Oregon was a massive and mysterious frontier for white Americans.
Public curiosity of the wild west had already begun, but the completion of the Transcontinental Railway, at Promontory, Utah, in 1869 allowed access to and through this huge expanse of land.
Tanzi Propst/Park Record
Before photography was used to illustrate newspapers and magazines, Jules Tavernier and Paul Frenzeny put their own stamp on things by carving woodblocks for printing to document the expansion of the American West.
A new exhibit, “A Great Frontier Odyssey: Sketching the American West,” which showcases the blocks, prints and images made by these two French-born immigrants, is open through April 4 at the Park City Museum.
“This gorgeous exhibit that comes to us through a company called Exhibit Envoy is a great combination of art and history, and features beautiful, hand-colored prints from Harper’s Weekly Magazine that employed these two artists,” said Courtney Titus, Park City Museum’s curator of collections and exhibits. “Jules and Paul met while living in New York City, and Harper enlisted them in 1873 as a team to travel across the country and document the newly opened Western frontier.”