D. Howard Hitchcock

United States·1861-1943

D. Howard Hitchcock was born in Hilo in 1861 into a missionary and legal family, and became the leading figure of Hawaii's Volcano School. Educated at Punahou School and Oberlin College, he began as a self-taught sketcher of the island's volcanic landscapes until the French painter Jules Tavernier urged him toward formal training. He studied at the National Academy of Design in New York and, from 1891 to 1893, at the Académie Julian in Paris under Bouguereau and Ferrier, showing work at the 1893 Salon before returning home. Back in Honolulu he helped found the Kilohana Art League in 1894 and spent decades painting Kilauea's eruptions, Kauai's Waimea Canyon, and the landscapes of Maui, his style loosening into a freer impressionism by the late 1920s. He exhibited widely on the West Coast and at expositions in Seattle and San Francisco, and had a retrospective at the Honolulu Museum of Art in 1936. He died in Honolulu in 1943, having witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor.