Here's the info from the Temecula Valley Museum:
The City of Temecula and the Temecula Valley Museum are proud to present A Great Frontier Odyssey: Sketching the American West, a compelling traveling exhibition on view from FRI, OCT 3, 2025 through SUN, NOV 30, 2025. This exhibit traces the 1873 overland journey of French-born artists Jules Tavernier and Paul Frenzeny, commissioned by Harper’s Brothers Publishing Firm, to document the rapidly changing American frontier. In the years following the Civil War, Americans were eager to see images of the West, prompting the New York-based Harper Brothers to send the artists on a coast-to-coast expedition. The resulting illustrations captured key events, communities, and landscapes across the nation, offering a vivid and human perspective on the expansion of the American West. Working as a team, Tavernier painted each scene in watercolor while Frenzeny added newsworthy details and translated them into pencil drawings on wood blocks for engraving. Their combined artistic and journalistic talents created powerful visual records that favored the everyday experience of common people along their route to San Francisco. Both artists brought a fresh, outsider’s perspective to the American frontier. Frenzeny, of French noble descent, became a leading illustrator for newspapers and adventure novels such as Anna Karenina and The Jungle Book, and later joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in London, where he spent the rest of his life. Tavernier, one of the most celebrated painters of the American West, remained in California after the journey. His studios in San Francisco and Monterey became hubs for the burgeoning California art scene, and he quickly became one of the most successful artists on the West Coast.
The exhibition is curated by French-born historian and author Dr. Claudine Chalmers, who has dedicated her career to exploring the influence of early French populations on the development of California. She is the author of the companion book Chronicling the West for Harper’s: Coast to Coast with Frenzeny & Tavernier in 1873–1874, as well as Splendide Californie! Impressions of the Golden State by French Artists, 1786 to 1900. A Great Frontier Odyssey: Sketching the American West is presented in partnership with Exhibit Envoy and is an adaptation of the original retrospective organized by the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. The works are on loan from ExhibitsUSA, a national program of Mid-America Arts Alliance. Please contact the Temecula Valley Museum at 951-694-6450 or visit TemeculaValleyMuseum.org, for more information on this exhibit. Be sure to follow @TemeculaValleyMuseum for updates.