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September 14, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Volcano School

In early nineteenth-century France, Château de Fontainebleau, the Forest of Fontainebleau, became a sanctuary for the growing leisure classes, for whom a train ride from Paris was an easy jaunt.

Called “the branch-office of Italy”, the Forest of Fontainebleau spread across 42,000 acres of dense woods with meadows, marshes, gorges, and sandy clearings.  Quiet hamlets ringed the forest.

It was to one of those villages, Barbizon, that artists journeyed beginning in the 1820s, with a promise of room and board at the newly established inn Auberge Ganne. The Auberge provided lodging for these pioneering painters of nature came to be called the Barbizon School and they collectively shared a recognition of landscape as an independent subject. (Met Museum)

In America, the Hudson River School was America’s first true artistic fraternity. Its name was coined to identify a group of New York City-based landscape painters that emerged about 1850 under the influence of the English émigré Thomas Cole (1801–1848) and flourished until about the time of the Centennial.

Several of the artists built homes on the Hudson River.  The term “Hudson River School” in the 1870s fairly characterizes the artistic body, its New York headquarters, its landscape subject matter, and often literally its subject. (Met Museum)

In the Islands, there was the Volcano School.

The Volcano School was a generation of mostly non-native Hawaiian painters who portrayed Hawaiʻi Island’s volcanoes in dramatic fashion during the late 19th century. (NPS HAVO)

In the 1880s and 1890s, Mauna Loa kicked off an eruption that brought lava closer to the town of Hilo than ever before.  Hawai‘i residents and tourists alike flocked to the Big Island for a chance to see the orange and red glow over the city of Hilo.

This was in the days before color photography – painters were among the most eager to witness and recreate the explosive lava plumes and vibrant flows. (HuffPost)

A distinctive and recognizable school of Hawaiian painting developed; it is perhaps best exemplified by Jules Tavernier’s depictions of craters and eruptions. Other artists, fresh from exposure to the current trends in Europe and America, reinterpreted the lush light and varied landscape of Hawai‘i to create a distinctive body of work.

With the dawning of the twentieth century, art in Hawai‘i reflected the diminishing isolation of the islands and the emergence of a multicultural modernist tradition. (Forbes)

Author and humorist Mark Twain, on assignment for the Sacramento Daily Union, described seeing Kīlauea at night: “…the vast floor of the desert under us was as black as ink, and apparently smooth and level …”

“… but over a mile square of it was ringed and streaked and striped with a thousand branching streams of liquid and gorgeously brilliant fire! Imagine it— imagine a coal-black sky shivered into a tangled network of angry fire!”

Kīlauea was such a popular subject for painters that a group emerged called “the Volcano School,” which included well-known Hawai‘i painters Charles Furneaux, Joseph Dwight Strong, and D. Howard Hitchcock.

Jules Tavernier (French 1844–1889) was arguably the most important Volcano School painter; he arrived in Hawai‘i in December of 1884. He created paintings that came to characterize the genre with dramatic scenes of molten lava bubbling under diffused moonlight, jagged black cliffs, and fiery glows, as seen in his nocturnal view of Kīlauea.  (HoMA)

Tavernier had lived in San Francisco with roommate Joseph Dwight Strong.  In October 1882 Joseph Dwight Strong, born in Connecticut and at age two came to the Islands with his New England missionary father (American 1852–1899), returned to the Islands with his wife Isobel on a commission to paint landscapes for shipping magnate John D Spreckels, son of the Sugar King Claus Spreckels. (Theroux) (Strong’s step-father-in-law was Robert Louis Stevenson.)

David Howard Hitchcock, grandson of American missionaries (American 1861–1943), is perhaps one of the most important and loved artists from Hawaiʻi. Although born and raised in Hawaiʻi, he left the islands to study art in San Francisco and Paris.

Before his formal training abroad, Hitchcock was inspired by other Volcano School painters and was encouraged by Jules Tavernier to endeavor life as an artist. Hitchcock admits to following Tavernier and Joseph Strong around, ‘like a parasite.’  (NPS HAVO)

“Hitchcock was early hailed as ‘our island painter’ and his early canvases met an enthusiastic reception in Hilo and Honolulu. The Honolulu press commented on them at length. His early work, up to his European trip in 1890, shows great indebtedness to (Jules) Tavernier…” (Forbes)

Charles Furneaux (American 1835–1913), showcased the fiery Hawai‘i volcano scenes that have intrigued viewers since he began painting them in the late 19th century.  Furneaux’s paintings are described as “among the most sublime depictions of smoldering lava pools, lightning bolts over the ocean, steaming vents and heavy clouds signaling the active presence of the volcano.” (HoMA)

Painter and printmaker Ambrose McCarthy Patterson (Australian 1877–1966) arrived in Hawai‘i on a stopover in 1916 and remained for the next 18 months. Patterson was described as having particular interest in Kīlauea, incorporating the subject into many of the paintings and block prints he produced during his time here. (HoMA)

Other Volcano School artists include Ernst William Christmas (Australian 1863–1918), Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming (Scottish 1837–1924), Ogura Yonesuke Itoh (Japanese 1870–1940), Titian Ramsey Peale (American 1799–1885), Louis Pohl (American 1915–1999), Eduardo Lefebvre Scovell (British 1864–1918), William Pinkney Toler (American 1826–1899), William Twigg-Smith (New Zealander 1883–1950) and Lionel Walden (American 1861–1933).

© 2022 Ho‘okuleana LLC

Filed Under: Prominent People, Place Names Tagged With: Ogura Yonesuke Itoh, Titian Ramsey Peale, David Howard Hitchcock, Louis Pohl, Charles Furneaux, Eduardo Lefebvre Scovell, Volcano School, William Pinkney Toler, Art, William Twigg-Smith, Jules Tavernier, Lionel Walden, Joseph Dwight Strong, Ambrose McCarthy Patterson, Ernst William Christmas, Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming

April 24, 2018 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

Keakealani School

Peter Lee, an enterprising pioneer with an eye to the future, tried to popularize the Punalu‘u-Pahala route to Kilauea Volcano, a noted attraction, then and now.

“The wonderful volcano of Kīlauea, on the island of Hawaii, is the great attractive of visitors. It is the only crater in the world that is constantly in action, and that can be safely approached at all times to the very edge of the precipice which encloses the boiling lava.”

“To reach Kīlauea necessitates a passage of thirty hours from Honolulu in a fine steamer to Hilo or Punalu‘u, then a ride of thirty
miles in coaches takes visitors to a fine hotel, which overlooks the molten lava lake. It is a sight that will repay the effort and expense incurred ten times over, and one that will never be forgotten.” (Whitney)

In 1891, Lee built a 24-mile wagon road from Pahala to Kilauea, following by seven years the construction of a hotel at Punalu‘u. (NPS) However, the construction of the Volcano Road from Hilo had also begun.

With the completion of the Hilo to Volcano Road in 1894, four-horse stagecoaches came into the picture, reducing the travel time from Hilo from two days to six and one-half hours, and Hilo became the principal departure point for Kilauea. (NPS)

Lee later sold to the new owners of the Volcano House and then managed both hotels for them. Lee would remain as manager of the Volcano House until 1898.

Lee established a home on land near the center of the ʻŌlaʻa Summer Lots 29-Mile subdivision, which later become Volcano Village.

Noting the need for a school there, in 1914, Peter Lee donated a one-acre site on Haunani Road (named for one of his daughters) to the Territory of Hawai‘i for a “school to teach the children of the region”.

In 1915 the first school building was constructed – a classic one-room structure, along with a teacher’s cottage, small garage, and water tank. The school was named “Keakealani School” in honor of another of Lee’s daughters. (VSAC DEA)

In 1934 the growing student population called for larger facilities and the present two-room building was constructed and the teachers’ cottage and garage demolished, which left the layout we see there today.

In the late 1930s the Kennedy Family, who owned the property abutting the school site to the Hilo side, donated 2.25 acres to the Territory to increase the site to its current 3.25 acres.

In addition to the two-room building, the property consists of a grassy field with a few open-sided, temporary shelters. (VSAC DEA)

By Executive Order No. 1040 dated November 27, 1943, control of the subject property was placed in the Territorial Department of Public Instruction, now the Department of Education (DOE).

“The Hawaii Visitors Bureau won’t admit it. Mainland tourists basking in the sun at Waikiki beach won’t believe it. But kerosene and electric heaters are used to warm the tootsies of some 100 youngsters who attend classes in several public schools here in this island paradise when the mercury takes a nose dive.”

“Mrs Antonio Short, principal of KeaKealani school in the volcano area on the island of Hawaii, explained that ‘some days during the winter we keep our heaters burning all day and have frosty windows, like real Christmas weather.’”

“‘Frost ‘fell’ on our school yard twice in five years, and the temperature sometimes gets as low as 32 degrees,’ Mrs Short said. ‘Most of the youngsters even have to wear sweaters and coats until 10 am on cold days. And if it gets much worse, the youngsters will have to wear shoes all the time.’” (The Times, Shreveport, December 16, 1956)

DOE operated a public school on the site until 1973, when the students were transferred to Mountain View Elementary School. Until 2010, DOE used the facility as an outdoor education center for elementary students on the island of Hawaii.

Budgetary constraints caused DOE to terminate this program, and the facility was subsequently licensed on a year-to-year basis to Volcano School of Arts and Sciences (Volcano School), a public charter school, commencing on July 1, 2010. (DLNR)

Volcano School used the facility as its middle school campus, and received a $618,000 grant-in-aid from the 2011 Legislature to expand the facility to better accommodate its middle school program.

DOE and Volcano School subsequently executed a Lease Agreement effective as of August 1, 2012 that specifies that the premises shall be used for a charter school (consistent with the purpose of the executive order). (DLNR)

This allows the school to consolidate its grades K-4 classes, which are currently located on Old Volcano Rd., with its grades 5-8 classes so the school’s students will be together on one campus. (KHON2)

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© 2018 Hoʻokuleana LLC

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Filed Under: Schools Tagged With: Hawaii, Hawaii Island, Volcano, Peter Lee, Haunani, Keakealani, Keakealani School, Volcano School

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