Click to Enlarge

During my time in Hawaii, I’ve visited both the Volcano’s National Park on the Big Island and the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum on Oahu. During each visit, I’ve marveled at the paintings by Jules Tavernier and D. Howard Hitchcock.  Both of these men were at the Volcano School in the late 1800s.

Wikipedia notes that Tavernier “was fascinated by Hawaii’s erupting volcanoes—a subject that was to pre-occupy him for the rest of his life, which was spent in Hawaii.” During this time, the trip to Kilauea was a grueling one-to-two day adventure on horseback. I can only imagine the journey.

In writing of Tavernier’s “House of Everlasting Fire”, The Hawaiian Gazette wrote, “Words fail to depict the awe-inspiring grandeur and weirdness which combine to strike the beholder with a conviction of the genius which can so truthfully portray the wondrous lineaments of the ever restless lake of fire, the dark and grim surroundings of the famed abode of that dread goddess whose fretful moods are voiced by loud explosions, fiery tongue and trembling’s of the earth.”

Hitchcock, was a graduate of Punahou School on Oahu and a student of Tavernier at the Volcano School and like Tavernier explored and painted “old” Hawaii, in all its glory.

And so, with both Tavernier and Hitchcock in mind, I took at spin at a digital rendering of an extremely rare, incredible, perhaps never seen before, fire hose of lava streaming into the ocean from the cliffs of Kilauea.