(ABOVE) The famous portrait of Queen Liliuokalani by William F. Cogswell, on loan from Iolani Palace, occupies a place of special prominence in the current exhibition 1898: U.S. Imperial Visions and Revisions at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.
On October 19, 1891, Queen Liliuokalani rode in her carriage through the streets of Honolulu on her way to William F. Cogswell's studio. The American painter was renowned for portraits of prominent people and presidents; Lili'uokalani had seen Cogswell's portrait of President Abraham Lincoln when she attended a state dinner at the White House in 1887. Accompanying the queen were the royal chamberlain, James W. Robertson, and Prince David La'amea Kahalepouli Kinoiki Kawananakoa, nephew and hanai (adopted) son of her brother, King David Kalakaua. If Liliuokalani, a devoted diarist, wrote down her thoughts from that day, no record of them survives. But it must have been an emotional journey: She had just lost both her brother and husband within the span of just seven months-men whose likenesses she was about to see in the soon-to-be unveiled oil paintings.
The queen had had a tumultuous year because of those tragedies. She had ascended to the throne nine days after learning that her brother, Kalakaua, had died while seeking medical help in California. The king had hoped to be healthy enough to travel to Washington DC to renegotiate a trade agreement with the United States, but he succumbed to illness in San Francisco on January 20, 1891.
Upon her accession, local newspapers praised Liliuokalani's intellect, beauty and experience. "Hawaii is for the first time in her history to have a Queen," wrote Liliuokalani's friend Ida Pope in a letter. "Liliuokalani has borne her honors gracefully and has long been associated with the late King that she is conversant with public affairs. Long live Hawaii's Queen-Fair may her reign be-for she has a land flowing with milk and honey-a people amiable and lovable to a fault."
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(ABOVE LEFT) Queen Liliuokalani in 1908. (ABOVE RIGHT) Cogwell's portrait of Queen Liliuokalani's brother, King David Kalakaua, painted at about the same time as Liliuokalani's in 1891, remains in 'Iolani Palace's Blue Room.
At the beginning of her reign and still in mourning, Liliuokalani toured the archipelago to meet with her subjects. Shortly after returning, she suffered a second loss: the death of her husband, Prince Consort John Owen Dominis, on August 27. Friends since childhood, the queen and the prince consort had been married for nearly three decades. As her most trusted adviser, he was accorded a state funeral.
"[My husband] was borne, with all honors accorded to his brother, the king, to his final resting-place," Liliuokalani wrote in her 1898 autobiography, "followed by many sincere mourners, who had, by the kind offices of which I have only made mention now, done all that could be done to soften my grief, and for whose sympathetic attentions I shall never cease to be grateful."
In his studio, Cogswell revealed three paintings: of Kalakaua, Dominis and Liliuokalani. Kalakaua's life-size portrait depicts him standing in blue military dress uniform decorated with the stars of four Hawaiian orders (the Royal Orders of Kalakaua, Kamehameha I, Kapiolani and the Crown of Hawaii) as well as decorations from the kingdoms of Belgium, Great Britain and Prussia and the Empire of Japan. Cogswell's rendering of the king alludes to another state portrait hanging in Iolani Palace, that of French king Louis Philippe I. As in Louis Philippe's portrait, Kalakaua is shown with his right hand resting on a table where the crown of Hawaii and the royal scepter lie, emphasizing his role as a constitutional monarch.
Before shipping Liliuokalani's portrait to the Smithsonian, Iolani Palace took great care to ensure its stability. Here, conservator Larry Pace (seen kneeling) inspects the portrait in the palace's Blue Room in May 2022. PHOTO COURTESY PACE ART CONSERVATION / GOLD LEAF STUDIOS
For three decades, Dominis had served five Hawaiian monarchs, and Cogswell's three-quarter life-size portrait emphasizes his devotion by depicting him in a military dress uniform bearing the Royal Order of Kamehameha.
In Liliuokalani's life-size portrait, Cogswell painted her in the stunning black ribbon gown she had worn for the 1887 Golden Jubilee of Great Britain's Queen Victoria, decorated with the star, cross and sash of the Knights Grand Cross of the Order of Kalakaua. Cogswell didn't neglect to include her signature piece of jewelry: a diamond butterfly brooch she had purchased during her 1887 visit to London.
According to 1891 Honolulu press accounts, Liliuokalani was pleased with Cogswell's paintings and spent more than an hour viewing them. They also reported that the queen sat for Cogswell, but that seems unlikely; the portrait strongly resembles a well-known photograph of the queen. A frequent visitor to Hawaii, Cogswell had met Kalakaua and Dominis. For their posthumous portraits, however, he relied on photographs. (He had created an earlier portrait of Kalakaua in 1879 and one of the queen while she was still a princess.)
Less than a year later, in June 1892, a Hawaiian-language newspaper reported that Cogswell offered the three paintings for sale to the Hawaiian government for 'Iolani Palace. He extended an open invitation for members of the Hawaiian legislature to view them. The following month, the queen negotiated a sales price of less than $4,000 for all three, including the majestic gilded frames, suitable for the portraits of heads of state.
"The frame of a painting is the most important feature," writes master gilder and frame historian William Adair on his sketch of the frame around Liliuokalani's portrait (ABOVE). "It is the protection provided by the gods. And treasured by the dweller within." Adair's sketch indicates the conservation work to be performed on the frame, including restoring the stylized anthemion (honeysuckle) flower motifs in the corners.
The paintings were hung in the Blue Room, Iolani Palace's informal reception area, where visitors would wait prior to state audiences in the throne room; here they acquired added significance as the official representations of the monarchs. Liliuokalani and Kalakaua's likenesses flanked the wooden doors leading to the dining room. Appropriately, the painting of Dominis hung to the right of the queen's.
In October 1892 a Hawaiian-language newspaper article encouraged readers to book a tour of the palace to see the newly purchased paintings. They remained in the Blue Room until sometime after the queen's overthrow in 1893. In 1895, when Liliuokalani was imprisoned in the palace after having been accused of attempting to overthrow the government of the so-called Republic of Hawaii, she would have passed her portrait on the second floor of the palace as she headed to the room where she would be imprisoned. Despite the fact that the revolutionary Provisional Government of 1893 and the governments of the subsequent Republic of Hawaii and the Territory of Hawaii all used Iolani Palace as their executive building, Liliuokalani's painting remained there, not only as a portrait of an individual but also as a visible emblem of the erstwhile-and some might say still extant-Kingdom of Hawaii.
Cogswell's portrait of Liliuokalani remained in Iolani Palace until the 1950s, when it was moved to Washington Place, the queen's former private residence, which by then had become the official residence for the governor of Hawaii. After the palace had undergone renovations that meticulously restored it to its late-nineteenth-century appearance, the queen's portrait was returned to the Blue Room in 1991 to be reunited with those of Kalakaua and Dominis. There it remained until last year.
A close-up of the frame shows the honeysuckle ("honesakala" is the Hawaiian transliteration) at the corner, a popular motif on frames around portraits of nineteenth-century heads of state. "The honeysuckle is an ancient Greek symbol for everlasting life," notes Adair. "It is a vine that never dies." As such, it was a fitting symbol for royalty, signifying a capable and enduring leader. Cogswell's signature can be seen in the upper right of the image.
In November 2022, Liliuokalani's portrait was sent to Washington DC as part of 1898: U.S. Imperial Visions and Revisions, an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery. On loan from the Hawaii State Archives, with support from 'Iolani Palace and the Royal Hawaiian Benevolent Societies, the exhibition is the first time that the portrait has been on view outside Hawaii. One hundred twenty-five years after the Spanish-American War, this is the Smithsonian's first exhibition about American intervention in Cuba and the subsequent American expansion into Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
"In 1898 the United States began to emerge as a world power, employing a newly modernized naval fleet to engage and defeat the Spanish navy in both Manila and Cuba," says historian and exhibition co-curator Kate Clarke Lemay. Lemay and exhibit co-curator Taina Caragol believe the "War of 1898" is a more appropriate name for the Spanish-American War, which coincided with the annexation of Hawaii-separate conflicts born of the same imperial impulse. "Both happened in the same year," says Lemay. "The exhibition addresses these two conflicts as well as the Philippine-American War, which resulted from the US soldiers who were stationed in Manila beginning in July 1898."
"In the United States the War of 1898 and the territorial expansion it yielded have been hailed as a triumph that ushered in an era of US global power," says Caragol, curator of painting, sculpture and Latino art and history at the National Portrait Gallery. "However, this historical period also witnessed intense debate, when many in the United States and in the lands it seized asked, 'How could a nation born out of an anti-colonial struggle take into its possession overseas territories? Did this go against the country's founding values of freedom?' This exhibition sheds light on those debates and points to their aftermath."
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(ABOVE LEFT) Liliuokalani's portrait is the centerpiece of the Smithsonian Institution's first major exhibition to examine US intervention in Cuba and expansion into Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in 1898—the year Hawaii was annexed as a US territory. (ABOVE RIGHT) Adair restores an anthemion corner on the frame of Liliuokalani's portrait, re-carving the details in gesso prior to gilding. PHOTO COURTESY GOLD LEAF STUDIOS
In an exhibition that includes some of the most recognizable oil paintings of American presidents, the queen's portrait, with its restored gilded frame, is given special prominence. Lemay and Caragol "knew the portrait of Queen Liliuokalani was a key piece for the exhibition and therefore dedicated the most important sight-line to her," says Concetta Duncan, head of communications at the National Portrait Gallery. "Her portrait is the most visible in the space." On display, too, are petitions from the Hawaiian people to the American government in support of the queen and opposing annexation. The exhibit also contains an 'ahu 'ula (feather cloak) made by Maria Kealaulaokalani Lane Ena and willed to the Smithsonian by Princess Abigail W. Kawananakoa. Meant to represent Kalakaua, he may have worn it on the Hawaiian throne. Another item included is a first edition of Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen, Liliuokalani's 1898 autobiography.
Even so far from Hawaii, the queen's portrait conveys the same messages as when it was first hung in the Blue Room in 1892. According to William Adair, the master gilder and historian who conserved the frame prior to the exhibition's opening, the Classical Greek design of the frame is meant to convey that the subject is a beloved head of state-symbolized by the carved anthemion, or honeysuckle flower motifs, in the corners.
Decades before, Adair had visited Iolani Palace to inspect the gilded frame of its Louis Philippe I portrait in preparation for its conservation. He was surprised to find that its corners did not feature the anthemion motif; this was a surprise, as it had been a very popular stylistic flourish in nineteenth-century France. Adair mentioned this to the late James Bartels, who for more than two decades had served as Iolani Palace's curator and managing director. "I told Jim Bartels, 'There's something missing from the corner.' His response was, 'Well, maybe someday we'll figure it out,'" says Adair.
An ahu ula (feather cloak), possibly worn by Kalakaua while on the throne, is among several items from late nineteenth-century Hawaii featured in the exhibition.
Now Adair believes he's figured it out. While restoring Liliuokalani's frame for the Smithsonian exhibition, Adair noted that it is consistent with the style popular in 1830s France, replete with the anthemion flower. Adair thinks that Louis Philippe's gilded frame probably had anthemion flowers that were likely removed to serve as a model for the ones on the queen's frame. "If my theory is correct, then the anthemion was removed by whoever gilded those frames for Cogswell and put hers together. I have a feeling that her frame and that of her brother have this ornament as a very significant connection to Louis Philippe I, for being a king who had supported the rights of man." Like many of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the revolutionaries who founded the French Republic, "The king of the French and Kalakaua were both Freemasons," Adair points out, an organization that espoused the ideal that all are created equal from birth.
Adair believes the honeysuckle decorations were included on the queen's frame to send a message. The queen was as knowledgeable about Western as Hawaiian traditions, and she would have known that "the honeysuckle is an ancient Greek symbol for everlasting life. It is a vine that never dies. You can't kill honeysuckle. Somehow it just keeps coming back, like a cactus," Adair says. "It is a Greek Revival ornament Louis Philippe would certainly have known about when he sent his portrait to King Kamehameha III in 1830. It makes sense the queen had it included," says Adair. Such ornamentation signals that the person depicted within its boundary was a capable leader, he adds.
Among the items included in the exhibition is the quilt seen above, a wedding gift to Rosina Kalanikauwekiulani, a descendant of King Kamehameha I, in 1898. It features the flag and coat of arms of the Hawaiian kingdom along with a phrase spoken by King Kamehameha III: "Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono" (usually translated as "the life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness"), which in 1959 was adopted as the motto of the newly added state of Hawaii.
In her autobiography, Liliuokalani describes her effort to block the United States from annexing Hawaii by pleading her case in Washington DC on behalf of "forty thousand Hawaiians (not to count those of other nationalities to the number of over sixty thousand), who have no voice in public affairs, either in Hawaii or in the representation of the present government at Washington," she wrote. "To oppose this project, and represent this downtrodden people, there was in Washington simply the presence of one woman, without legal advisor, without a dollar to spend in subsidies, supported and encouraged in her mission only by her faithful adherents, and such friends as from time to time expressed to her their sympathy."
After the exhibit closes on February 25, 2024, the queen's portrait, with its newly resplendent gilded frame, will return to Iolani Palace and once again greet visitors in the Blue Room, none the worse-a little better, even-for having made the 9,600-mile round-trip journey. Until then, 125 years later, after her portrait was so expertly rendered, that "one woman" is once again in Washington DC, silently telling her continuing story.
