Hiding in plain sight: Kolomona
I first came across this beautiful image in Nathaniel Emerson’s pioneering work, Unwritten Literature of Hawaii: The Sacred Songs of the Hula (Washington, D.C., 1909). Captioned ‘Hawaiian Musician Playing on the Uku-lele’ and printed with the permission of the artist, Hubert Vos (1855-1935), I was dumbfounded that this masterful painting was virtually unknown in the lexicon of ‘ukulele iconography. I wondered what had become of the original. Nearly as surprising was my next encounter with Vos’ ‘ukulele player. While perusing a copy of The Oxford English Dictionary, Vol. XVIII (Oxford, 1989) at the Poynter Library, USF St Petersburg, I stumbled upon this citation:
1900 Century Mag. June 164/2 Kolomono … holds the ukulele, a stringed instrument which may or may not be indigenous to the island.
I hightailed it over to the main library at the Tampa campus of USF where there is a complete collection of The Century Magazine and combed the stacks for Vol. LX (New Series Vol. XXXVIII) No. 2, June 1900, page 166 and there he was in all his photo-lithographic splendor, and with a name to boot.
Solomon In His Glory
Kolomono, as he is termed in the musical tongue of Hawaii, or Solomon, as he was baptized, shows the jovial, pleasure-loving features of his race as he holds the ukulele, a stringed instrument which may or may not be indigenous to the island. He is a civilized native, and the son of one, and his raiment is not like that which Captain Cook found there a century and more ago. He is a minstrel and cab-driver, leader of sports and merriment, one of the “characters” of Honolulu. In his gay, frank smile one divines the reason why it was found easy to oust the poor queen, but one is left still in surprise that it should have been thought necessary to do so with such violence. When selected as the best-looking, yet most typical, Hawaiian by the artist, Solomon was indeed in his glory; he was like a Venetian gondolier who has been chosen as the best oarsman for a regatta, or a Dublin jarvey who has won the prize for the jauntiest jaunting-car. Bubbling over with satisfaction, he could only give vent to his pride by ejaculating, “Why, oh, why was I born so lucky?”
According to the article, Vos, a naturalized American citizen from Holland, had been a commissioner (from Holland) to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 where
… he had a chance to see a great range of ethnic types, not merely in the Plaisance, but at the Congress of Religions. It was then for the first time borne in on him that we have no really good pictures of the different races of the globe. Photographs there are, and on these everybody relies. But the photograph gives too much and too little: too much of the accidental and unimportant, and often of the ugly; too little of the soul, the selected, the synthetic. As a portrait-painter Mr. Vos believes that a likeness should express ancestry and race and the soul of the individual.
“Kolomono,” which is signed and dated 1898, was exhibited in New York City in February 1900 at the Union League Club. The New York Times critic opined “… the artist is a brilliant colorist … and a virile and graceful draughtsman. His Hawaiian flower girl and Hawaiian minstrel well exemplify the extreme sensuality of the Hawaiian type.” Vos was married to an Hawaiian princess, Kaikilani of Hilo, the former Mrs. Lorimer Graham, and doubtless, she must get some of the credit for her husband’s Hawaiian eye. Kolomono’s lauhala hat and koa wood ukulele (is that a Dias, Santo, or Nunes?) are exquisitely rendered.
It was shortly after I released my Bach CD in 2001 that I learned Vos’ painting (titled Kolomona: The Hawaiian Troubador) was part of the permanent collection of the Honolulu Academy of Art, a gift of Henry B. Clark, Jr. in 1994. A year later the Art Academy produced a CD entitled The Art of Solo ‘Ukulele (I’m grateful to Byron Yasui for my copy) which included performances by Byron, Benny Chong, Gordon Mark, and Jake Shimabukuro. Not surprisingly, the cover art featured a full-color reproduction of the Vos painting.
Since then, Kolomona has shown up a few more times. The Hawaiian Historical Society used an image of the 1900 Century Magazine litho for the cover of The Hawaiian Journal of History, Vol. 37, 2003 which featured an article by Jim Tranquada and me (‘A New History of the Origins and Development of the ‘Ukulele, 1838-1915’); Spirit of Aloha (November-December 2005), the in-flight magazine of Aloha Airlines, used the same image as a full-page illustration to accompany an article I wrote entitled ‘How I Learned to Play the Ukulele.’ Recently, at Byron’s suggestion, I provided Malamalama, the alumni magazine of the University of Hawai‘i, with several illustrations, including Kolomona. It accompanied an article by UH alum George Furukawa called ‘An ‘Ukulele Comeback’ (Vol. 32, No. 1, January 2007).
E komo mai! Welcome back, Kolomona!
Text © 2007 by John King