Friday, July 9, 2021

Genevieve "Gene" Springston Lynch: One of The Seven

Genevieve Springston Lynch
c. 1912

The Seven was a coalition of Honolulu-based women artists who first exhibited together in 1929. Several of the group’s inaugural members — Juliette May FraserGenevieve Springston LynchMadge Tennent (founder and president), and Juanita Vitousek — would subsequently devote the bulk of their careers to Hawai‘i and painting the beauty of the islands. Female artists largely dictated the terms of 20th-century island culture, rarely encountering the sort of institutionalized sexism that often circumscribed the work of their global counterparts.

Yet, the story of women artists in Hawai‘i extends both before and beyond The Seven’s two-year existence. As early as 1880, Helen Whitney Kelley and Helen Thomas Dranga began turning out depictions of the islands’ scenery, subtly challenging the monopoly set by their renowned male contemporaries, such as D. Howard Hitchcock and Lionel Walden. By the early 20th century, kamaʻaina artists Blasingame, Fraser and Cornelia MacIntyre Foley, and Lynch had trained on the United States mainland and in Europe, returned to Hawai‘i and taken on pupils in the islands, all the while cultivating personal styles that would accelerate the advent of a localized modernism movement

Genevieve (Gene) Springston Lynch was born in Forest Grove, Oregon (26 miles west of Portland) on September 20, 1891.  "Gene" Springston studied at the Pratt Institute and Art Institute of Chicago.  She taught art at Punahou School in Honolulu prior to and after her marriage to L. L. Lynch. Lynch was invited to have a solo show in Paris in 1935. Because of prejudice against female artists, she shortened her professional name and signature to "Gene Lynch." She exhibited in the 1939 Society of Independent Artists show. Her later years were spent in Palo Alto, California. She died there in 1960.  Her forte was stylized paintings of exotic plants.

Genevieve Springston Lynch
Yellow Ginger
c. 1940s
Oil on board
20" x 16"
Private Collection


Genevieve Springston Lynch
Cup-and-Saucer Flowers
c. 1940
Oil on board
20" x 16"
Honolulu Museum of Art

Genevieve Springston Lynch
Hawaiian Shoreline with Figures
c. n.d.
Oil on board
18" x 24"
Private Collection


Genevieve Springston Lynch
Hawaiian Plantation Scene
c. n.d.
Oil on canvas
27" x 32.75"
Private Collection

Lynch's pieces such as Yellow Ginger and Cup-and-Saucer are emblematic of the style of painting pioneered by Georgia O'Keefe and brought to Hawaii in 1939 during O'Keefe's assignment to create promotional imagery for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company.
Her later years were spent in Palo Alto, California, where she died in 1960.  

Sources__________________________________________________________________________
Isaac's Art Center, Hawaii Preparatory Academy, Sisters of the Brush: Women Artists of Hawaii, 1880-2000.
Invaluable, https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/painting-genevieve-springston-lynch-7268-c-5514a608bb#
American Eagle Fine Art, https://www.americaneaglefineart.com/genevieve-gene-springton-lynch-1891-1960yellow-ginger-circa-1940s/
askART.com, Genevieve Springston Lynch, 
https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/53197247_painting-genevieve-lynch


Saturday, May 29, 2021

Madge Tennent: Fueled the advent of Hawaiian Modernism

 

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. 

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."

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.

Madge Tennent
Local Color
ca 1934
Oil on canvas
Represented Hawaii at the
1939 New York World's Fair


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.

Madge Tennent
Lady in Pink Dress
ca 1954
18 x 12 inches

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.”

Madge Tennent
Lady in Victorian Dress
ca 1956
Ink
18 x 12 inches

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:

IN HONOR OF THE LATE MADGE TENNENT

WHEREAS, Madge Tennent, one of Hawaii's most important artists, died on February 5, 1972 in the 82nd year of her long and eventful life; and

WHEREAS, better than any artist to date, Madge Tennent was able to capture and honestly express in her many paintings and drawings the subtle charm and quiet grace and dignity of the Hawaiian people; and

WHEREAS, Madge Tennent was also a warm and generous person, who gave often and generously of her works to friends and to charity; and

WHEREAS, Madge Tennent, having spent a half century in Hawaii, leaves behind a rich legacy of art, which shall forever belong to Hawaii; and therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the Senate of the Sixth Legislature of Hawaii, Regular Session of 1972, that this body solemnly notes the passing of a great artist and person.

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

Monday, April 19, 2021

Juliette May Fraser: Painter, Muralist, Printmaker of Hawaii

     


 The story of women artists in Hawai‘i begins well before and beyond The Seven’s two-year existence. As early as 1880, Helen Whitney Kelley and Helen Thomas Dranga began turning out beloved depictions of the islands’ spectacular scenery, subtly challenging the monopoly set by their well-known male contemporaries, such as D. Howard Hitchcock and Lionel Walden. 


Juliette May Fraser

By the early 20th century, kamaʻāina artists Blasingame, Juliette May Fraser and Cornelia MacIntyre Foley had trained on the US mainland and in Europe, returned to Hawai‘i, and taken on pupils there, while cultivating personal styles that would accelerate the advent of a regional style of modernism. Working alongside other women who traveled to the islands in the early 20th century, including Lynch, Russell, Tennent and Vitousek, these artists transformed the concept of “island art” from Hawai‘i’s male-dominated environmental imagery into a more nuanced arena that reflected various modernist trends growing across European at that time. Several would also play instrumental roles in the war effort, designing camouflage for local artillery units and creating large-scale murals at local military bases to encourage the soldiers deployed in the Pacific. 


Juliette May Fraser
Camouflage Rhythms
1940s
Fraser and the lei sellers developed a system consisting of cutting burlap and recycled fabric into strips, dyeing and configuring the strips to blend in with specific areas around the islands, and then weaving the strips onto large-scale nets, often completed while singing Hawaiian songs.

In the later 20th century, several other figures of note emerged to continue the tradition of women artists driving Hawaiian art forward. Betty Hay Freeland and Martha Greenwell pursued seascape and landscape painting in Hawai‘i on their own terms, while batik specialist Yvonne Cheng and graphic artist Pegge Hopper expanded upon Tennent’s genre of the Hawaiian wahine (woman). 

Honolulu-born artist Juliette May Fraser is perhaps best known for the murals she painted both in Hawaii and around the globe. She portrayed Hawaiian legends along with other themes through linoleum cut, oil painting, ceramics, and fresco. 
 
Juliette May Fraser was born on January 27, 1887 during the reign of King Kalakaua in Honolulu. After graduating from Wellesley College in Massachusetts, she worked as an educator, like her mother and father who had come to the islands to teach. "That was practically the only thing a woman could do then," she told an interviewer a few years before her death in 1983. Her comments with regard to her education at Wellesly were that, “Wellesley had excellent art history. They did not have very good--they were not so much interested in art practice. They had some, but even the teachers knew that it wasn't an art school standard. It didn't pretend to be.” She took architecture classes but since Fraser didn’t receive any practical art training, she studied with various teachers and ultimately decided to attend the Art Students League in New York. 


Juliette May Fraser
Little Teacher
1952
Linoleum Cut Lithograph

Fraser returned to Honolulu, taught for a few more years before she received a commission to paint a mural for Mrs. Charles Adams, grandmother of Ben Dillingham. That opportunity placed her on a lifelong path of painting murals, from the World's Fair in San Francisco to Ipapandi Chapel on Chios Island, Greece, where her work was so beloved that the chapel's street was named after her. 



Juliette May Fraser
Makahiki Ho'okupu
1939
Charcoal and sanguine mural on masonite
Made for the 1939 San Francisco International Exposition,
presented to the Library in 1977 by the Hawaii Visitors Bureau and Chamber of Commerce

 Makahiki Ho'okupu (Harvest Celebration) was created by Fraser in 1939 for the Hawaii pavilion at the San Francisco World's Fair. The 50-foot charcoal and sanguine mural (on 13 masonite panels) depicting harvest and gift-giving ceremony remained in storage until 1980, when it was rededicated and placed in Hamilton Library on the artist's 93rd birthday. 


At the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, Fraser's fresco 'Air', (ca 1953) is the largest and most complex of the frescoes in Bilger Hall, and depicts the land-linked culture that sustained early Hawaiian people.


The work of kama'aina (Hawaii born) Juliette May Fraser, can today be found in many Hawaii public buildings. In 1934-35, Faser executed a series of murals based on the legends of Hawaii for the Hawaii State Library. In 1934, she was invited to create a work of art for a public place by the Federal Work Progress Administration and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration which took a year to complete. For three months she received $35 a week to work on the project however, when the funds ran out, she continued on her own until the murals were completed. The murals, which extend from floor to ceiling, depict Hawaiian legends along with additional panels in the room which display various marine life and Hawaii flora and fauna. The murals were unveiled on March 14, 1935 to the general public. 
 

Juliette May Fraser
Hoonanea (Quiet Chat between Friends)
1944
Drypoint
6 x 5 inches
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Fraser is also noted for her printworks, and was associated with Honolulu Printmakers, which is said to be the oldest continuously active printmaking organization in the United States. The group was founded in 1928 by a group of local artists in an effort to encourage the art of printmaking in Hawaii. Each year, one of the organization's members is selected to create a special print. Along with Juliette May Fraser, some of the printmakers of yesteryear - John Melville Kelly, Huc-Mazelet Luquiens, Cornelia Macintyre Foley, Isami Doi, Madge Tennant, Jean Charlot, John Young and others - became world-renowned artists, their prints now demanding much higher sums than the original $5 price. 


Juliette May Fraser
 
Hawaiian Nativity
1958
 Fresco
 4 1/2 × 8 ft.
 St. Catherine’s Catholic Church, Kapaʻa, Kauai, Hawaii.
 Photo: Timothy T. De La Vega, 1999.

In 1958, Fraser created the above mural for the newly built St. Catherine’s Catholic Church in Kapa‘a, Kauai, commonly referred to as Hawaiian Nativity. Covering the makai (sea-facing) wall, it shows Hawaiians of various ethnicities presenting ho‘okupu (gifts) to the newborn Christ child, who sits on his mother’s lap.  She wanted the painting to be modern and “international in flavor,” she said, reflecting Hawaii’s ethnic diversity. 


Instead of a donkey, a jeep has brought the holy couple, who are portrayed as Native Hawaiian, to the place of their son’s birth. The license plate reads, “4-20-58,” the date on which St. Catherine’s was dedicated. Mary wears a muumuu and lei, while Joseph stands behind her with a sugar cane stalk. “The Holy Child is hapa [mixed race] with blond hair and strong Polynesian features,” writes Anthony Sommer in the 1999 article for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin that introduced me to this painting. That Jesus’s skin tone is the lightest of the bunch might be regarded by some as problematic, a subtle reinforcer of racial hierarchy. However, it might be the artist’s attempt to show a multiracial Christ, bearing the features of different peoples. 


In Fraser’s fresco, locals approach with ho‘okupu, the fruits of their personal labors given freely as offerings in expression of gratitude, respect, and aloha. Filipino fishermen present their freshest catch, and Portuguese goatherds (as the artist identified them) come with their flocks; they are greeted by a Chinese angel in a T-shirt, jeans, a sideways ballcap, and flip-flops. From the right, a Hawaiian ali‘i (hereditary noble) comes with the gift of an ʻahu ʻula (feathered cloak), made only for royalty. He stands in line behind a child who offers Jesus a lei (flower garland). Traditionally, ho‘okupu are given to an akua (god), king, priest, doctor, or host, so this painting acknowledges Jesus as fulfilling all those roles. 



                                                                                    Juliette May Fraser
                                                                 Kana Wrestling the Turtle
                                                                                 Fresco
                                                                                  1954
                                                                       Hawaii State Museum

 
 
Juliette May Fraser died in July of 1983 in Honolulu, Hawaii at the age of 96. 

 

Sources________________________________________________________________ 

Juliette May Fraser, The Annex Galleries, https://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/740/Fraser/Juliette, retrieved April 19, 2021 

The Watumull Foundation, Oral History Project, Interview with Juliette May Fraser, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1979. 

Art & Theology Revitalizing the Christian imagination through painting, poetry, music, and morehttps://artandtheology.org/tag/juliette-may-fraser/, retrieved April 19, 2021 

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, https://art.famsf.org/juliette-may-fraser/hoonanea-means-quiet-chat-between-old-friends-l, retrieved April 19, 2021

Mutual Art.com, https://www.mutualart.com/Exhibition/Camouflage-Rhythms--Artwork-by-Juliette-/3597EABE2D690619, Honolulu Museum of Art, retrieved April 19, 2021