Hawaii paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe

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Georgia O'Keeffe created a series of 20 paintings based on imagery from the Hawaiian Islands during her nine-week visit to the Territory of Hawaii in 1939. O'Keeffe's trip was part of an all-expenses paid commercial art commission from the Philadelphia advertising firm N. W. Ayer & Son on behalf of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, later known as Dole. The company arranged for O'Keeffe to paint two works, without any artistic restrictions, for a magazine advertising campaign for pineapple juice. Two of the paintings from this commission, Crab's Claw Ginger Hawaii and Pineapple Bud, were used in advertisements that appeared in popular American magazines in 1940.

The exhibition of the complete Hawaii series of paintings, comprising flowers, landscapes, and cultural artifacts, has only been shown together in their entirety once, appearing in O'Keeffe's original showing at An American Place from February 1 to March 17, 1940. The original exhibition led to the sale of one work, Cup of Silver Ginger, which contemporaneously entered the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Subsequent public exhibitions in 1990, 2013, and 2018, have shown only part of the series due to some of the works being held in different private and public museum collections. This series of Hawaii paintings by O'Keeffe is sometimes referred to as her "tropical period".

Background[edit]

Georgia O'Keeffe had previously worked as a commercial artist in the fashion advertisement industry in Chicago and for corporate and business commissions in New York. Her husband, Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946), was opposed to commercial art, and this created friction between them, particularly during the early 1930s, when O'Keeffe unsuccessfully tried to take over for Diego Rivera during the Man at the Crossroads controversy at Rockefeller Center.[1] In late July 1938, O'Keeffe traveled to Stieglitz's 36 acre, family estate on the western shore of Lake George in Adirondack Park. After arriving, she wrote to friend and fellow artist William Einstein (1907–1972) (a distant cousin of Stieglitz, whose work Stieglitz exhibited at his gallery that same year) telling him that she had been in discussion that summer with a representative from advertising firm N. W. Ayer & Son about taking a commission for a pineapple company. In the letter she notes that an advertising executive flew out to Hawaii on a China Clipper plane to discuss the proposal with the client. O'Keeffe tells Einstein that she does not know if the deal will even go through, and she is somewhat indifferent to it, but she admits that the brochures about the Hawaiian Islands got her attention.[2]

Ayer commission[edit]

In the 1930s, Ayer art director Charles T. Coiner of Philadelphia advertising firm N. W. Ayer & Son was partly responsible for the popularity of marketing fine art with commercial products, particularly for clients like DeBeers, Steinway & Sons, and the Container Corporation of America. Coiner hired modern artists to perausde customers of the quality of purchasing products made by Ayer's clients in high-end magazine advertisements. Coiner took the Dole account in 1933, making changes to their advertising strategy. Before coming to Ayer, Dole focused on the health and nutrition of pineapple. Coiner turned this around and changed the product attention to Hawaii itself. Japanese-American painter Yasuo Kuniyoshi and California Scene painter Millard Sheets were matched with Dole advertisements. Coiner next invited American artist Isamu Noguchi and modernist painter Georgia O'Keeffe to join the campaign. In the summer of 1938, O'Keeffe was offered an all-expenses paid, nine-week trip to the territory of Hawaii as a commercial art commission for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company (Dole). In exchange, O'Keeffe agreed to produce two paintings without artistic restrictions for a magazine advertising campaign for canned pineapple juice. O'Keeffe was hesitant at first, but Coiner managed to convince her to take the commission.[3]

Voyage to Hawaii[edit]

Before traveling to the Hawaiian Islands, O'Keeffe finished hanging her paintings at Stieglitz's gallery in preparation for her annual exhibition at An American Place. Georgia O'Keeffe: Exhibition of Oils and Pastels ran from January 22 to March 17, 1939, a showing of 22 paintings in her absence.[4] On January 30, 1939, Stieglitz took O'Keeffe to the Grand Central Station in Manhattan, where she departed for the Hawaii Territory.[5] After arriving in San Francisco, O'Keeffe boarded the SS Lurline, a Matson luxury cruise ship that took her to Oahu, finally arriving in Honolulu on February 8.[6] The entire trip, from New York to Hawaii, took her nine days.[5]

Arrival, interisland travel[edit]

O'Keeffe's ship arrived at Honolulu Harbor on February 8, 1939. She was met by a representative from Ayer (thought to be John S. Coonley) who took a tender out to the boat, and Helen Richards, the wife of Atherton Richards, president and manager of Hawaiian Pineapple, who waited for O'Keeffe on the dock. Both Coonley and Richards brought O'Keeffe traditional flower leis as a greeting, which greatly impressed her. She soon checked into the Moana Hotel in Waikīkī. In a radio postal telegraph to Stieglitz soon after arriving, she writes: "Arrived this morning feeling fine. Lovely summer weather here. Hope you are alright."[7]

O'Keeffe spent almost four of the nine weeks on Oahu.[5] She wanted to live and work among the workers on the Dole plantation to best capture the images for her commission. Contrary to her wishes, the pineapple company refused to allow this. Due to the social, racial, and gender norms of the 1930s, the company discriminated against women and segregated the fieldworkers, making O'Keeffe's plan impossible for them to fulfill. The company was also unable to provide adequate samples of the crops for her to model. Angered by this treatment, the story goes, she was unable to paint the subject until she returned home.[8] Research by Honolulu Museum of Art curator Theresa Papanikolas indicates that this established narrative may not be entirely accurate. Papanikolas believes that letters written home by O'Keeffe indicate she tried to paint a pineapple while still in Hawaii.[9]

On February 23, she visited Kauai, spending two days on the island, visiting with artist Reuben Tam (1916–1991) in Kapaʻa. During her stay, she was hosted by Robert Allerton and John Gregg Allerton at the former Hawaiian Royal tropical estate, now known as the Allerton Garden.[5] After flying back to Oahu and spending additional time there, O'Keeffe visited Maui on March 10, where she was a guest of Willis Jennings, the manager of the Kaeleku Sugar Company plantation. His daughter, Patricia Jennings, took O'Keeffe on a guided tour of Hana, Iao Valley, and Haleakalā crater.[10]

On March 28, she left Maui for the Big Island on an interisland steamboat that arrived in Hilo the next day. She was met by her hosts, the Shipman family, who took her on a tour of a black sand beach, and later Kīlauea, where she stayed at the Volcano House. The next day, she traveled to Kona, and spent the remainder of her time there on the west side. She returned to Honolulu on April 10 to prepare for her departure to the mainland.[10]

Departure and return[edit]

O'Keeffe left Hawaii on April 19, 1939, on the ocean liner SS Matsonia. Her first stop was in Los Angeles, followed by San Francisco, where she took a train back to New York. Upon her return to New York, she began to get back into her routine through the month of May, but she began to experience serious health problems.[10]

Sometime in May, O'Keeffe began suffering from what she described as exhaustion. In a letter to art critic Henry McBride (1867–1962) dated July 22, 1939, she writes that she had been seeing a physician three times a week and had remained mostly bedridden for six weeks prior to the letter.[11] She experienced "stomach problems, headaches, and weight loss".[12] Meanwhile, the commission for Dole loomed large. She began painting, and by June or July, O'Keeffe completed Crab's Claw Ginger Hawaii, an image of a lobster claw heliconia, and Papaw Tree, Īao Valley, Maui, an image of a papaya tree. Both were submitted to Ayer to fulfill the commission for the canned pineapple juice ads.[12] She did not go to New Mexico that year and she stopped painting entirely until October.[13]

O'Keeffe often spoke about returning to Hawaii. In 1958, she wrote a letter to Ansel Adams, telling him that her two best experiences were going to Yosemite with him and visiting Hawaii. She eventually returned to Maui in 1982.[14]

Advertisements[edit]

Although it was never demanded or specified that O'Keeffe would produce a painting featuring a pineapple, her two submissions featuring a heliconia flower and a papaya tree caused some confusion. Ayer art director Charles T. Coiner recalled that O'Keeffe "came back with all kinds of beautiful paintings but nothing to do with pineapple...I said, 'I wonder if you couldn't paint the pineapple flower.'"[15] O'Keeffe explained to Coiner what had happened and how she was prevented from painting the pineapple by Dole and how she was provided with a terrible specimen unfit for painting. Coiner quickly made arrangements to send her a viable plant.[15]

In just 36 hours, Coiner had a new pineapple plant shipped by plane from Hawaii to New York for O'Keeffe to paint. Sometime between June and July, O'Keeffe eventually completed her commission, producing two new paintings, Crab's Claw Ginger Hawaii and Pineapple Bud, for Dole to use in their advertisements.[10] Papaw Tree, Īao Valley, Maui, a painting of a papaya tree, a candidate for the commission, was rejected by Dole because their direct competitor at the time produced papaya juice.[16]

Two separate print advertisements for Dole Pineapple Juice used two different paintings to accompany the ads. Crab's Claw Ginger Hawaii and Pineapple Bud, were published in Vogue and the Saturday Evening Post in the 1940s. Crab's Claw Ginger Hawaii shows an image of a red heliconia in close view with the ocean in the background along the bottom; an island can be seen along the horizon with low-lying clouds. The text accompanying the ad using Crab's Claw Ginger Hawaii reads in part: "Hospitable Hawaii cannot send you its abundance of flowers or its sunshine. But it sends you something reminiscent of both—golden, fragrant Dole Pineapple Juice."[10]

Pineapple Bud shows a framed painting of a close-up of a small, newly formed pineapple surrounded by its leaves. The ad presents this image in the context of art as a "First Showing: A Dole Pineapple Bud from Hawaii". The text at the bottom of the ad reads in part: "Perhaps you have never seen a pineapple bud—and words cannot describe the glowing crater of color which on the Dole plantations grows and ripens into a luscious big pineapple...Perhaps you have never tasted Dole Pineapple Juice—and there is no other way to discover the fragrant, zestful goodness of this pure juice.".[17]

Paintings[edit]

Of the 20 Hawaii paintings O'Keeffe completed in 1939, there are eleven paintings of flowers, seven showing Hawaii landscapes, and two depicting cultural artifacts.[18] Although Hawaii is known for its native plant species, none of the flowers or plants depicted in O'Keeffe's paintings are endemic to Hawaii.[19] The plants and flowers O'Keeffe painted represent introduced species that had been brought to the Hawaiian Islands, initially by Polynesian voyagers, and much later, Europeans, over a combined period of 1500 years.[α] It is not entirely clear which paintings were completed in Hawaii and which were finished on the mainland in New York, but O'Keeffe acknowledged this distinction in her original 1940 exhibition statement.[β] Previously, art historians like Lisa Messinger have dismissed O'Keeffe's Hawaii paintings as "very beautiful", but of "secondary importance" because they were perceived as formulaic and lacking innovation. Messinger considers O'Keeffe's Maui paintings as some of her best of the Hawaii period, with Bella Donna as her crowning achievement in the series.[21]

Flowers[edit]

Crab's Claw Ginger Hawaii was owned by Dole Company from 1940 to 1976. After that time, the work passed through 10 separate owners, finally settling with Laila and Thurston Twigg-Smith in 1988, where it remained for 33 years. In 2021, it was sold by their descendant Sharon Twigg-Smith at Phillips for more than $7.7 million.[22]

Landscapes[edit]

It is believed that O'Keeffe painted her waterfall series on Maui at the Iao Valley, as her guide Patricia Jennings witnessed the event. O'Keffee painted for three days in late March at Iao Valley and wrote about her experience in letters to Stieglitz and Ettie Stettheimer.[23]

Cultural artifacts[edit]

Fishhook From Hawaii, No. 1 was bequested to the Brooklyn Museum in 1987 after O'Keeffe's death. The Brooklyn Museum held a special place for O'Keeffe as that was where she held her first retrospective museum exhibition in 1927. Fishhook From Hawaii, No. 2 was gifted to the Alfred Stieglitz Collection at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1987, also after her death.

Exhibitions[edit]

All 20 Hawaii paintings, along with one non-Hawaii work (Sunset, Long Island, 1939) were shown at O'Keeffe's annual exhibition at An American Place from February 1 to March 17, 1940. It was well received by the public and critics alike, and led to the sale of Cup of Silver Ginger to the Baltimore Museum of Art.[24] Time magazine published a positive review of the exhibition.[16]

In the intervening five decades, many of the paintings appeared by themselves at exhibitions, but were not all exhibited together as they existed in disparate public and private collections throughout the United States. The Honolulu Academy of Arts was able to gather 18 of the 20 works for the Georgia O'Keeffe: Paintings of Hawaiʻi exhibition from March 22 through May 6, 1990, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the original showing at An American Place.[25]

12 of the 20 works from the series were shown along with Ansel Adams' work in Hawaii at the Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: The Hawaiʻi Pictures exhibition, also at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, from July 18, 2013, until January 12, 2014. The exhibition travelled to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum from February 7 to September 14, 2014.[26]

17 of the 20 works were shown at the Georgia O'Keeffe: Visions of Hawaiʻi exhibition in 2018 at the New York Botanical Garden, along with a horticultural exhibition of Hawaiian plants and flowers from the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.[27]

Works[edit]

External image
image icon Georgia O'Keeffe in Hawaii, 1939, photographs, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

Notes and references[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Haupt Conservatory. "Likely unknown to the artist, many of the plants she encountered–and ultimately painted–were not native to the Hawaiian Islands, but had been introduced over the course of human habitation beginning approximately 1,500 years ago. Her depictions of hibiscus, plumeria, bird-of-paradise, and even banana–an ornamental variety–provide a snapshot of the tourist’s Hawai'i, and serve as a record of her initial exploration of her new surroundings."
  2. ^ "Some of them were painted in Hawaii, some were painted here in New York from drawings or memories of things brought home."[20]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Saville 1990, pp. 15-16.
  2. ^ Cowart et al. 1987, pp. 224-226; Saville 1990, pp. 11-12.
  3. ^ Saville 1990, pp. 11-13.
  4. ^ Drohojowska-Philp 2005, pp. 379-380; 1938 Annual Exhibition catalog notes.
  5. ^ a b c d Saville 2011, pp. 7-8.
  6. ^ Saville 1990, p. 13.
  7. ^ Saville 2012, pp. 88-91, 123.
  8. ^ Saville 1990, p. 13; Scott 2020, pp. 30-31.
  9. ^ Papanikolas 2013, pp. 13, 19; O'Connell 2013.
  10. ^ a b c d e Saville 2011, p. 19-20.
  11. ^ Cowart et al. 1987, pp. 228, 286.
  12. ^ a b Saville 2011, p. 20.
  13. ^ Cowart et al. 1987, p. 293.
  14. ^ Saville 1990, p. 20, 64.
  15. ^ a b Cass 1989.
  16. ^ a b Time 1940, p. 42.
  17. ^ Saville 2011, pp. 27, 98.
  18. ^ Saville 1990, pp. 21-61.
  19. ^ Katz 2018
  20. ^ Saville 1990, p. 17.
  21. ^ Messinger 2001, p. 121.
  22. ^ Phillips 2021.
  23. ^ Saville 2011, pp. 12-18.
  24. ^ Saville 1990, pp. 18-19.
  25. ^ Saville 1990, p. 7.
  26. ^ Papanikolas 2013, p. 107.
  27. ^ Hamilton 2018, p. C13.

Bibliography[edit]

  • Cass, Julia (August 14, 1989). "Charles T. Coiner, 91, Painter And Noted Advertising Designer". Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on May 21, 2015.
  • Christopher, Tom (Summer 2018). "Georgia O'Keffe Paints Hawaii". Humanities. National Endowment for the Humanities. 39 (3).
  • Cowart, Jack; Hamilton, Juan; Greenough, Sarah (1987). Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters. National Gallery of Art; New York Graphic Society Books, Washington, Boston. OCLC 1033646492.
  • Drohojowska-Philp, Hunter (2005)[2004]. Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 9780393343090. OCLC 1369657418.
  • Groarke, Joanna L.; Papanikolas, Theresa (2018). Georgia O'Keeffe: Visions of Hawaiʻi. New York Botanical Garden. ISBN 9783791357270. OCLC 1021055485.
  • Hamilton, William L. (May 24, 2018). "O'Keeffe’s Paradise, Lost and Found". The New York Times. p. C13. Retrieved January 27, 2024.
  • Hawkins, Richard A. (2011). A Pacific Industry: The History of Pineapple Canning in Hawaii. London: I.B.Tauris. ISBN 9780755698400. OCLC 772844818.
  • Jennings, Patricia; Ausherman, Maria (2011). Georgia O'Keeffe's Hawaiʻi. Koa Books. ISBN 9780982165645. OCLC 726821685.
  • Katz, Brigit (May 30, 2018). "See Georgia O’Keeffe’s Little-Known Hawaii Paintings Blossom Next to Real Plants". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved May 9, 2024.
  • Messinger, Lisa Mintz (2001). Georgia O'Keeffe. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0500203407. OCLC 1057621726.
  • Murphy, Rita (2019). "Paradise For The Pioneer: Georgia O'Keeffe's Trip To Hawaiʻi". Art Journal. Providence College. 1 (4): 33-48.
  • O'Connell, Maureen (August 10, 2013). "See Hawaii through the eyes of Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams". HAWAIʻI Magazine. Retrieved May 10, 2024.
  • Okihiro, Gary Y. (2009). Pineapple Culture: A History of the Tropical and Temperate Zones. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520255135. OCLC 261173660.
  • Papanikolas, Theresa (2013). Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: The Hawaiʻi Pictures. Honolulu: Honolulu Museum of Art. ISBN 9780937426883. OCLC 835620238.
  • Georgia O'Keeffe. 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York Auction 17 November 2021. Phillips. Retrieved May 8, 2024.
  • "Pineapple for Papaya". Time. 35 (7): 42. February 12, 1940.
  • Saville, Jennifer (1990). Georgia O'Keeffe: Paintings of Hawaiʻi. Honolulu Academy of Arts. ISBN 0937426113. OCLC 23079609.
  • Saville, Jennifer (2011). "Introduction". Revised. In Jennings, Patricia; Ausherman, Maria (Ed.). Georgia O'Keeffe's Hawaiʻi. Koa Books. ISBN 9780982165645. OCLC 726821685.
  • Saville, Jennifer (2012). "Off in the Far Away: Georgia O'Keeffe's Letters Home from Hawaiʻi". Hawaiian Journal of History. 46: 83-137.
  • Scott, Sascha T. (Summer 2020). "Georgia O'Keeffe's Hawaiʻi? Decolonizing the History of American Modernism". American Art. Smithsonian American Art Museum. 34 (2): 26-53. ISSN 1073-9300. doi:10.1086/710471.
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