Original Charcoal Drawing, "Marion, Hawaii" by John Melville Kelly

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Original Charcoal Drawing, "Marion, Hawaii" by John Melville Kelly

About the Item

Original portrait done in charcoal on paper. Signed by the artist within the portrait. This drawing was reproduced as the jacket cover for the 1943 book, Etchings and Drawings of Hawaiians. The model was his own daughter-in-law, Marion. It is extremely rare since almost all of John Kelly's artwork in circulation are in the form of etchings or aquatints. It is also rare in the fact that it is very large and the composition is of her face only, as opposed to a full figure which is more typical. SIZE: paper 23-1/4" x 16-1/4", image 18-1/2" x 13-1/2", framed 35-1/4" x 28" About the Artist: John Kelly (1878 - 1962) John Melville Kelly arrived in Honolulu in 1923 to take up a position with Town and Country Homes, Inc., a real estate development initiated by Charles R. Frazier. A background of over fifteen years with various advertising agencies in both New York City and San Francisco made Kelly an ideal man to introduce what Mr. Frazier termed "the first modern advertising campaign in Hawaii." After three years with Mr. Frazier, Kelly was put in charge of the art department of The Honolulu Star-Bulletin (1926 - 1932). After about ten years in Honolulu he left a relatively sure salary to become a freelance professional artist. Born on an Arizona ranch where he lived for twenty years, Kelly's formal art training took place almost entirely in San Francisco, where he attended Partington Art School. In addition to his advertising work, he spent 14 years as a staff artist for the San Francisco Examiner. In 1908 he married sculptress Katherine Harland. One day in 1924 he watched his wife print a plate for a class she was taking at the University of Hawaii, and he decided to try his hand at it. With this his career as a printmaker had begun. This informal introduction into the mechanics of printmaking may account for some of the features of Kelly's work. He was never indoctrinated with the purist's idea of a print as a cleanly wiped plate on which the lines must do all the work. Strong as his lines are and sensitive as is his draftsmanship, Kelly was seldom content with line alone. In every print medium in which he worked he sooner or later found his greatest satisfaction in the modelling of form. In his earliest etchings which are usually wiped absolutely clean, one can see him adding line after line to achieve the desired effect. He could rarely leave an etched plate without adding a few lines of drypoint. As soon as he started to print his own plates he found that a tonal effect could be achieved by leaving some ink on the plate. Of course this meant that every print was not exactly like every other. Once started in printmaking, Kelly's adventurous mind kept him constantly experimenting with new techniques. He soon dropped etching for the richer effects of drypoint, and around 1934 he turned to aquatint which led to the experiments with color printing for which he is best known. His first color prints are conceived in flat decorative areas reminiscent of Gauguin, but he soon learned to manipulate the color so that the backgrounds are toned and the figures modelled until their form is almost palpable. Kelly was enchanted with the Hawaiian people. His works featured Hawaiian and Asian subjects, and he was an early advocate of the Hawaiian people and their rights. References: Hawaiian Idyll: John Melville Kelly by Natasha Roessler Drucker Honolulu Academy of Arts (November 2009). This unprecedented monograph on the print maker John Melville Kelly (1878-1962) is the first to trace the artist's extraordinary career from his early years in California to his stunning commercial success in Hawaii. While skilled in a variety of media, including painting and drawing, Kelly is best known for his alluringly beautiful and poignantly nostalgic etchings of native Hawaiians. His prints and drawings capture the essence of the islands and their people, even as they evoke a time and place far removed from modern experience.

Creator:
John Melville Kelly (Artist)
Dimensions:
Height: 35.25 in (89.54 cm)Width: 28 in (71.12 cm)Depth: 4 in (10.16 cm)
Place of Origin:
Hawaiian Islands
Period:
Early 20th Century
Date of Manufacture:
circa 1943
Condition:
Seller Location:
Honolulu, HI
Reference Number:
Seller: 167431stDibs: LU121323256382