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Ad Code: 4
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An example of work by Edward Bailey
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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Biography from AskART:
| Edward Bailey arrived in Hawaii in 1837 aboard the ship "Mary Frazier", as a missionary teacher. He came to know the island of Maui in detail, and his paintings depict its valleys, homes and farms, riders on horseback, ships in the harbors, and the sky with ever present clouds.
Bailey and his wife had come from Massachusetts as missionary teachers; both age 22 and wed the week before the ship sailed. In 1844 he and his family moved to Wailuku, Maui, to take charge of the Wailuku Female Seminary. Apart from a few years in Kohala on the island of Hawaii, he spent most of the remainder of his life on Maui. Around 1849 the funding for missionary schools had run out; and his wife was pregnant with their fifth son. Bailey was an amazingly versatile man. Although he said that "a taste for making money was left out of my makeup", he tried his hand at a number of ways to earn money: surveying land for the Kingdom of Hawaii, supervising road and bridge building, growing and milling sugar cane, and supervising government schools. Bailey also pursued an interest in botany and was an amateur naturalist and farmer.
Through his work as a missionary teacher Bailey became fluent in the Hawaiian language, and as a surveyor he became intimately acquainted with the Maui landscape. Although it seems that he never had any formal training in art, he had sketched throughout his whole life. When visiting artists, including Enoch Wood Perry, who visited Maui in 1865, encouraged him to take up oils, he began to paint landscapes of his beloved island, for sale as well as gifts to his many friends. There is no evidence that Bailey had painted at all until the year of Perry's visit to Maui.
His first paintings reflect a cautious approach. He applied paint sparingly, and careful pencil sketches can be seen under the surface of his early works. Bailey generally limited himself to familiar subject matter, and had a particular feel for the mountains of Maui, including Haleakala, which dominated the view from his home.
He continued to paint for the rest of his life. His total output, about one hundred paintings, is limited primarily to scenes of the central part of Maui that he knew so well. One example is 'Iao Valley' (oil on canvas, ca. 1870), which was a gift by Bailey to his neighbor the Reverend W.P. Alexander. Bailey had lived at the mouth of the valley since 1844, and in the painting he carefully depicts the grassy ridges of the valley's walls with a series of undulating diagonal lines.
Bailey's close friend, the Reverend S.C.Damon, who was the seamen's chaplain of Honolulu, visited him in 1867, and made a note of his artistic progress: "We rejoice to know that our old school-mate, Mr. Bailey, who has so long resided a the mouth of the valley, has become so charmed with the contemplation of the scenery, that he is endeavoring to transfer some of its beauties to the canvas. Already he has executed two large landscape paintings which would do credit to one who had handled the pallet [sic] and brush, and sat before his easel from his youth."
Bailey was primarily a 'Sunday painter', but from time to time exhibited and sold his canvases. His work was exhibited in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Paris in the 1870s. A large view of Heleakala was shown at the Mechanics Institute of San Francisco in 1870 and sold on its return to Honolulu. In 1876 several of his Maui views were shown at the International Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. In later years his views of Maui's Iao Needle found favor with the then-rare tourists to the island. However, Bailey complained that sales were too few to help him financially, and that he was dependent on his sons for support.
Bailey moved with part of his family to California in the 1880s, but returned to Hawaii on lengthy visits and painted scenes of Maui until his death. The Maui Historical Society holds a large collection of Edward Bailey's paintings, located at the Bailey House Museum.
Source:
David Forbes, "Encounters with Paradise"
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Biography from AskART:
| | Bailey arrived in Hawaii in 1837. He had sketched from an early age but did not paint until 1865 when Enoch Wood Perry gave him painting lessons. Bailey moved to California in the 1880s but returned to Hawaii for lengthy visits and painted scenes of Maui until his death in 1903. About 100 of his paintings are extant. Exh: Mechanics' Inst. (SF), 1870; Int'l Centennial Expo (Philadelphia), 1876. | Source:
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California, 1786-1940"
Encounters With Paradise. | | Nearly 20,000 biographies can be found in Artists in California 1786-1940 by Edan Hughes and is available for sale ($150). For a full book description and order information please click here. |
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Edward Bailey is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Artists who painted Hawaii
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