Hilo, Banks of the Wailuku, Hawaii

Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming was an artist-adventurer who traveled from her home in Scotland to far flung locales where she sketched and painted watercolors. Between 1869 and 1880 she visited India, Sri Lanka, Fiji and the South Seas, New Zealand and Australia, Japan, China, and Yosemite in California. She made this watercolor in 1879 during a two month stay in Hawaii, focusing on the rapid flow of the Wailuku River which borders the town of Hilo on the Big Island. Buildings near the river relate to the Haili Church which American Protestant missionaries had established earlier in the nineteenth-century. In the distance at right, are the twin-towers of St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church which served a large Portuguese community of agricultural workers. Signatures at lower left were added by men and women connected to the Haili church who likely hosted Gordon-Cummings during her stay. A network of such connections made her work and travel possible.