Volcano school
The Volcano school was a loose group of expatriate artists - American, European, Australian and Japanese - who painted the active volcanoes of Hawaii's Big Island in the late nineteenth century. Kilauea and Mauna Loa erupted intermittently through the 1880s and 1890s, and reaching Kilauea meant a two- or three-day ride on horseback; the painters who made the trip turned its glowing lava lakes into dramatic nocturnal canvases that fused the European Sublime, Romantic landscape, and American landscape traditions. The core of the body of work comes from Jules Tavernier, Charles Furneaux and Joseph D. Strong, now regarded as the old masters of Hawaiian painting. Watercolors by the same artists tend toward daylight scenes. The printmaker Huc-Mazelet Luquiens called the period "a little Hawaiian renaissance".
Defining characteristics
- Dramatic nocturnal scenes: glowing lava and firelight against dark volcanic skies
- Sublime, awe-struck treatment of Kilauea and Mauna Loa craters and lava lakes
- European Romantic and American landscape conventions applied to Hawaiian subject matter
- Luminous effects - moonlight, steam and reflected fire glow over remote terrain
- Watercolor versions that shift to diurnal, daylight views of the same terrain
Key figures
- Jules Tavernier (1844-1889) — French painter and arguably the most important Volcano school painter
- Charles Furneaux (1835-1913) — American painter and teacher who made Kilauea his central subject
- Joseph Dwight Strong (1852-1899) — American painter whose volcano canvases form the core of the school's output
- D. Howard Hitchcock (1861-1943) — Hawaiian-born painter of Halemaumau and the island's craters
Example works
- Full Moon over Kilauea — Jules Tavernier (1887)
- Halemaumau, Lake of Fire — D. Howard Hitchcock (1888)
- Volcano at Night — Jules Tavernier (c. 1880s)
Sources
- Volcano school - Wikipedia encyclopedia