High Noon

Aloha! With the summer season officially underway, we in Hawai‘i wish to extend our sunshine and warm breezes to you! Though summer is pretty much identical to spring (and fall… and winter…) out here, we hope you readers farther from the equator are savoring some tropical weather of your own.

To that end, we share this divine Madge Tennent painting of a smartly dressed Hawaiian maiden taking a leisurely stroll along one of Honolulu’s sun-drenched thoroughfares. Hailed as “the single most important contributor to Hawaiian art in the 20th century” and “unquestionably the greatest interpreter of the Hawaiian figure,” Tennent spearheaded the Hawaiian Modernism movement of the 1920s and was the first island artist to attain global recognition. By 1940, she had enjoyed successful exhibitions around the world and leveraged her fame to draw attention to fellow island artists.

Enormous in both scale and substance, this Hawaiian woman—like all of Tennent’s oils—was built up in layers so thick that the paint literally leaps off the canvas. Brilliant colors abound: the shocking pink of her billowy holoku, lipstick, and lei haku; the ochre of her flesh; the dark forms of her top hat and parasol; and her mossy surroundings. The voluptuous figure, outlined with the artist’s signature cobalt line and composed of swirling forms, invokes the iconic archetype that Tennent perfected during the early 1930s. Here as in her other works, Madge Tennent celebrates Hawaiian femininity in all its graceful expressions, be it dancing hula under the sun, weaving lei near the docks, or meandering among the palms.

A hui hou! 

~ Justin