Madge Tennent
| Madge Tennent | |
|---|---|
Tennent lectures at the Honolulu Academy
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| Born |
Madeline Grace Cook 22 June 1889 Dulwich, South London, England |
| Died | 5 February 1972 (aged 82) Honolulu, Hawaii |
| Nationality | British, naturalized American in 1936 |
| Education | Académie Julian, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Julian Ashton |
| Known for | Painting, drawing, mural, sculpture |
| Movement | Hawaiian Modernism |
Madge Tennent (22 June 1889 – 5 February 1972) was a naturalized American artist, born in England, raised in South Africa, and trained in France. She ranks among the most accomplished and globally renowned artists ever to have lived and worked in Hawaiʻi.
A child prodigy, Tennent spent her formative teenage years in Paris, where she honed technical mastery under the tutelage of William-Adolphe Bouguereau; simultaneous exposure to the city's leading avant-garde artists, including Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Pablo Picasso, stoked her pioneering vision. Having served as an art educator in South Africa, New Zealand, and British Samoa, she settled in Honolulu with her husband and children in 1923.
Tennent's prolific output spanned paintings, drawings, and sculpture. Her reverent fascination with Hawaiian women inspired the sweeping aesthetic quest that would culminate in an iconic signature style: enormous paintings of voluptuous female figures that synthesized brilliant, swirling hues into graceful, harmonious compositions. A prominent figure on the international circuit, Tennent exhibited to critical and popular acclaim around the world. At the time of her death, many critics considered her the most important individual contributor to Hawaiian art in the 20th century.
She was born Madeline Grace Cook in Dulwich, England, the first of two daughters born to Arthur and Agnes Cook. Her father was an architect, seascape painter, and fine craftsman in woodcarving, while her mother owned, edited, and wrote for a weekly magazine titled South African Women in Council. Having settled in Cape Town by 1894, the Cooks took a lively interest in comparative creeds that embraced many religions, as well as in matters of psychic and astrological trend. Madge and her sister Violet were nurtured in this stimulating, creative environment, learning to read and write at an early age. Agnes was an accomplished pianist who taught Madge, in particular, to play. Her parents’ efforts to promote tolerance among various races and creeds left a lasting impression on her.
Although Madge attended an English boarding school and, later, a French Convent school in Paris, she otherwise had little formal schooling. Her talent for drawing prompted her parents to enroll her at age twelve in the Cape Town School of Art, where classes were limited to drawing from casts, still life, and portraiture; within a year, she had mastered and surpassed the curriculum. Her parents thus decided to relocate the family to Paris, where Madge could pursue more advanced training in the disciplines of art.
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