Kiana. a Tradition of Hawaii (Illustrated Edition)

📗 Jarves (1818-88) was an American newspaper editor and art critic who is best remembered as the first American art collector to buy Italian primitives and Old Masters. From 1840-48 he edited the Polynesian, an early weekly newspaper in the Hawaiian Islands. He became an honorary Hawaiian citizen, being awarded the order of Kamehameha I for his diplomatic services to Hawaii while empires fought to control it. In the 1850s he relocated to Florence, Italy where he served as US vice-consul and began collecting art, and was later appointed Cavaliere della Corona d'Italia by the king of Italy for his contribution to Italian art. In 1871 Yale University Art Gallery purchased 119 early Italian paintings from Jarves, spanning the centuries from the 10th to the 17th, which had been refused by other American museums. First published in 1857, this history of Hawaii was written in the main over a decade earlier while Jarves was resident there, and it draws on information and stories he collected. With black and white illustrations throughout.