Kamehameha Statue (original cast)

The Kamehameha I statue (original cast) is an outdoor sculpture by American artist Thomas Ridgeway Gould, cast in 1880 and installed in 1883. It stands in front of the old country courthouse in the town of Kapaʻau, located in North Kohala on the Island of Hawaiʻi. Made of cast brass and painted with lifelike colors, it depicts Kamehameha I, and represents an important cultural and spiritual object for the local community.

The Kamehameha I sculpture is an over-sized painted brass casting of King Kamehameha I, the ruler credited with unifying the Hawaiian Islands in the early nineteenth century and establishing the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi in 1810. Though the surface of the sculpture was originally finished with a brown chemical patina and gold leaf, it has become local tradition to paint the statue with lifelike colors, and it appears as such to this day. Originally commissioned to celebrate the centennial of Captain Cook’s arrival to the Hawaiian Islands and to stand in front of the Aliʻiōlani Hale government building in Honolulu, extenuating circumstances during its delivery to Hawaiʻi delayed its arrival, and resulted in its being placed instead in Kapaʻau, near Kamehameha I’s birthplace.

The statue had its origins in 1878 when Walter M. Gibson, a member of the Hawaiian legislature at the time, decided to commission a sculpture to commemorate the 100 year arrival of Captain Cook to the Hawaiian Islands. The legislature appropriated $10,000 for the project and made Gibson chairman of the Commemorative Monument Committee formed to oversee the process. While the committee did include Native Hawaiians, it was strongly directed by Gibson and by King David Kalākaua. After searching several prominent U.S. cities for an appropriate artist, Gibson contracted Thomas Ridgeway Gould, a Boston sculptor living abroad in Florence, Italy, to create the statue.

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