In 1938 the Dole Pineapple company asked Georgia O’Keeffe to travel to Hawaii to create two paintings for an advertising campaign. She agreed, on the condition that she could paint whatever she pleased.

It took O’Keeffe 9 days to travel from her home in Manhattan to Hawaii where she stayed for 3 months in 1939, traveling to Oahu, Kauai, Maui, and the Big Island. During her time on Oahu she requested to stay in a cabin on the Dole plantation, but feeling it was inappropriate for a woman to stay amongst the workers, they refused. So although O’Keeffe created almost two dozen paintings in Hawaii, on her return she presented Dole paintings of a crab’s claw ginger and a papaya tree. No pineapples in sight. Hoping to get at least one pineapple picture, the advertising agency had a pineapple plant shipped to O’Keeffe back in New York, where she reconsidered its spiky beauty and painted it. So they got a pineapple picture after all, using it and the ginger in the marketing campaign. 

Of the additional paintings, four live at the Honolulu Art Museum, including the rejected papaya. 

The best place to follow in her footsteps is on Maui. Here you can visit Iao Valley State Monument, where she painted several pictures from the back of a borrowed station wagon during a downpour. Alas, no waterfalls during our visit.

Then you can drive down the twisty Hana highway to Koki Beach where she painted the lava bridge. 

Unfortunately, due to a migraine mixed with car sickness we only made it as far as the black sand beach at Wai’anapanapa State Park, but the landscape is very similar (and the lava tube that opens to the sea is amazing). 

It was on Maui that O’Keeffe used a borrowed camera to take her first serious photographs, including one of the lava arch at Wai’anapanapa State Park. 

Of course, you can try to recreate her artistic vision by taking photos of the flowers she painted: 

There’s always a Philly Connection! The advertising agency involved was NE Ayer, founded in Philadelphia in 1868, making it the oldest in the country. Although no longer in business, the company’s national headquarters were in the gorgeous 1929 art deco building that still stands on Washington Square.

Note: The photos that I didn’t take are from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and the book “Georgia O’Keeffe’s Hawaii” by Jennings & Ausherman.