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| Madge Tennent |
Hailed as "the most significant individual contributor to Hawaiian art in the 20th century" and "without question the greatest interpreter of the Hawaiian figure," Madge Tennent (1889-1972) was one of The Seven, a coalition of female Hawaiian artists whose work was was first exhibited together in 1929.
Born in Dulwich, England, Tennant was five years old when her family moved to Cape Town, South Africa. At the age of twelve, she entered an art school in Cape Town, and the following year her parents, who recognized and her as a child prodigy, moved to Paris to enable Madeline to study there. She studied figure drawing at the Académie Julian under William-Adolf Bouguereau, the French realist academic painter, an experience that laid the technical foundation for her later figural drawings and paintings.
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| Madge Tennent Studio Study age 12 or 13 |
She and her family returned to South Africa, and after her marriage in 1915 to accountant Hugh Cowper Tennent (OBE), she relocated to his native New Zealand. In 1917, the couple moved to British Samoa when her husband became treasurer for the government. This is where Tennent's fascination with the native people blossomed into the "joyous exploration of the Polynesian form."
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| Madge Tennent Olympia of Hawaii (with Apologies to Manet) ca 1927 Oil on canvas 22 x 18 inches |
In 1923, the Tennents left Samoa en route to England, stopping in Honolulu where they were entranced with the Hawaiian Islands and decided to stay. In those early years, Madge Tennent helped to support her family by taking commissions to paint and draw portraits of children. A friend’s gift of a book on Gauguin set her on an artistic course that lasted 50 years, during which she portrayed Hawaiian women in an innovative style that became increasingly individualized and unique.
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| Madge Tennent Hawaiian Girl with Lei Po'o ca 1940 22 x 18 inches |
Tennent was active in Hawai’i from the late 1920s until the 1960s. “The Hawaiians are really to me the most beautiful people in the world," she once said, “no doubt about it – the Hawaiian is a piece of living sculpture”. Using swirls of oil, Tennent portrayed Hawaiian women as solidly fleshed and majestic – larger than life – capturing in rhythmic forms the very essence of their being. "They are strong, serene and proud." Her method of working with impasto – applying thick layers of paint to achieve a graceful, perfectly balanced composition – is evident in works such as Lei Queen Fantasia. Everything on the canvas whirls. The paint is applied in whirls in what might be called the “Tennent whirl” – the colors bright and luminous. Tennent envisioned Hawaiian Kings and Queens as having descended from Gods of heroic proportion, intelligent and brave, bearing a strong affinity to the Greeks in their legends and persons. She was criticized for her portrayal of larger size women but to her Hawaiian women fulfilled the standards of classic Greek Beauty.
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Madge Tennent fueled the advent of Hawaiian Modernism through both her own creative endeavors and unrelenting enthusiasm. She became a champion of the avant-garde and a driving force among Hawaii's visual artists. Tennent was president of The Seven, a coalition of woman artists that included Juanita Vitousek and Juliette May Fraser (her story in the previous post), and with Isami Doi co-founded the Hawaiian Mural Guild. Tennent also lectured on art history and offered studio workshops at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, inspiring an emergent generation of island-born modern artists. A frequent exhibitor both at home and abroad, Tennent rapidly became Hawaii’s most visible presence on the global stage, mounting successful one-woman shows in Auckland, Cairo, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Paris, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Sydney. This whirlwind of activity turned on an unwavering ideology: “To paint without thought of pleasing, to keep faith with my furthest discrimination in Art, and to make no compromise aesthetically.”
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During the mid-1950s, Madge Tennent suffered the first of several heart attacks, prompting her to shift from large-scale undertakings on canvas to smaller works on paper. She was diagnosed with a permanent heart ailment in 1958, and by 1965 she had discontinued working and moved into the Maunalani Hospital near Manoa. After a decade of gradually declining health, Tennent died in Honolulu on February 5, 1972. Her funeral was held at St. Andrew's Cathedral in Honolulu. Three days after her death, the Hawaiʻi State Senate commemorated the artist's vision, accomplishments, and influence:
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| Madge Tennent, photograph by Francis Haar |
Sources_______________________________________
Hawai'i Artist Archives at the University of Hawaii Library - Artist's Biographical Note: Madge Tennent, University of Hawai'i Manoa Library, https://guides.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/c.php?g=953236&p=7434759, retrieved May 29, 2021.
Isaacs Art Center Preparatory Academy, Madge Tennent, https://isaacsartcenter.hpa.edu/artist-works.php?artistId=158230&artist=Madge%20Tennent%20(1889-1972), retrieved May 29, 2021
When Wise Women Speak, interview with Madge Walls (granddaughter of Madge Tennent), https://whenwisewomenspeak.blogspot.com/2012/02/madge-tennent.html, retrieved May 29, 2021
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