Kestenman calls Hibiscus “important,” if not major. The painting is, though, of historical note. O’Keeffe’s larger series of Hawaiian flora and fauna has received particular attention over the past few years. In 2011, Koa Books published Georgia O’Keeffe’s Hawai’i, and the Honolulu Museum of Art presented “Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams: The Hawai’i Pictures” in 2014.
The artist initially traveled to the islands in 1939 to work on a commission for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company (which later became Dole). While the company hired her to render images for its advertising campaign, O’Keeffe instead roamed around O’ahu, Maui, Kaua’i, and Hawai’i, painting whatever she wanted. Verdant green valleys, spiky bright-red heliconia, and craggy black rocks all captured her attention.
In a catalogue essay for the NYBG show, Papanikolas writes that O’Keeffe created four compositions of hibiscus—“close studies of a single species that are both consistent with her serial modernism and suggestive of her personal transformation from tourist to ensconced visiting artist.”
According to Cody Hartley, senior director of collections and interpretation at Santa Fe’s Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, O’Keeffe’s Hawaii period is a great touchpoint in her career. The artist, who had been living in New York for years, began visiting New Mexico in 1929. She was so enamored with the landscape that she started spending months there at a time, relocating permanently in 1949. Inspired by her new surroundings, O’Keeffe painted bones, skulls, and other imagery associated with the desert.