Papers by Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt
Routledge eBooks, Mar 21, 2023
Religion and the Arts
In the 1880s, American artists Charles Furneaux, Joseph D. Strong, and Jules Tavernier—who later ... more In the 1880s, American artists Charles Furneaux, Joseph D. Strong, and Jules Tavernier—who later became known as the “Volcano School”—traveled to the Kingdom of Hawai‘i and produced dozens of landscapes ranging from otherworldly scenes of volcanoes to vistas of untouched, pristine beaches. While white, upper-class landowners in Hawai‘i served as the primary patrons of such paintings, the reigning monarch, King David Kalākaua, also commissioned his own sweeping landscapes from the same artists. This article focuses on the two competing narratives of paradise at work in both these paintings and writings about the Hawaiian Islands in the 1880s. “Paradise” could invoke a Romantic position, one that celebrated the landscape’s wildness and equated nature in its pure state with the lost Garden of Eden. On the other hand, Kalākaua’s commissions reflect what environmental historian Carolyn Merchant calls the Recovery Narrative: a story of humans reversing the effects of the biblical Fall by ...
My fellow graduate students Anna Warbelow and Bryna Campbell served as invaluable sounding boards... more My fellow graduate students Anna Warbelow and Bryna Campbell served as invaluable sounding boards throughout this process and read and edited chapters at various stages of completion. ix Even more importantly, their friendship ushered me through important transitions in both my academic and personal lives. I am likewise thankful for my church community group and the patient love with which they have surrounded my family and me. In addition, I am indebted to those who cared well for my sons and quite literally enabled me to teach, research, write, and learn French: Kate,
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Papers by Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt