27 Facts About Madge Tennent

Madge Tennent was a naturalized American artist, born in England, raised in South Africa, and trained in France.

Madge Tennent was born Madeline Grace Cook in Dulwich, England, the first of two daughters born to Arthur and Agnes Cook.

Madge Tennent's 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.

At the Academie Julian, Madge Tennent was quickly identified as a child prodigy and invited to study under William-Adolphe Bouguereau, a prominent artist-educator closely identified with Academic art.

In competition with older students from five academies, a 13-year-old Madge Tennent placed fifth with her full length charcoal drawing of a nude model.

Madge Tennent's drive to draw and paint well was sustained without pause as she worked long hours each day.

Madge Tennent was appointed the headmistress in art for several girls' schools in different cities of South Africa and the director of a government art school in Cape Town.

Again Madge Tennent directed an art school, having been appointed head instructor at the Government School of Art in Woodville, the village where Madge Tennent and Hugh lived while he awaited further military orders.

When orders came, Hugh was posted to France in support of the allied effort in World War I Madge relocated to her parents-in-law's home in Invercargill for the duration of Hugh's service abroad.

The Tennents lived in Samoa for six years, during which time Madge was able to indulge a fascination with the native people of Polynesian descent.

Madge Tennent was able to devote much of her time to drawing charcoal portraits of Samoans.

Madge Tennent was immediately taken with the Hawaiian people, and she would devote the remainder of her life to rendering them in paintings and prints.

Madge Tennent adapted line and form to the appropriately vivid medium of oil.

Just as Mrs Madge Tennent constructed her wahine layer by layer in paint, she built her canvases to equally monumental proportions; when standard issue could no longer satisfy her vision, she sewed pieces of canvas together to attain the desired size.

Madge Tennent tapped a brilliant, decidedly tropical color palette to create Hawaiians Hanging Holoku, Lei Queen Fantasia, and Local Color, depicting native women engaged in lei-making, dancing, and similarly island-specific activities.

Hawaiian Bride, one of the few paintings with which Mrs Madge Tennent was "almost satisfied," marked a turning point in the development of her distinctive style; there, as in the concurrent Girl in Red Dress and Two Lei Sellers, she achieved an ethereal intensity with softer hues and blurred, iridescent forms.

Madge Tennent's lifted arms, her wistful smile, the ember-like glow of her sunny flesh, are a perpetual and queenly benediction from one in an honored profession in the Islands possessing the most beautiful people of the world.

Madge Tennent was among the first artists to embrace native Hawaiians as a primary subject matter, whom she depicted as large and robust with audacious, swirling forms and colors.

Madge Tennent's influence was increased by her association with the Honolulu Museum of Art in its early days, where she was a frequent lecturer, and where she was included in most of the academy's early group shows.

One can see that it would be the easiest thing in the world for Mrs Madge Tennent to draw and paint with literal accuracy, and leave it at that.

Madge Tennent has the equipment of an exceptionally gifted artist, and to prove it she includes one or two heads done with an academic, though masterly touch, which gives one no more than the physical features of her sitters.

Madge Tennent was diagnosed with a permanent heart ailment in 1958, and by 1965 she had discontinued working and moved into the Maunalani Hospital near Manoa.

Madge Tennent's funeral was held at St Andrew's Cathedral in Honolulu.

WHEREAS, better than any artist to date, Madge Tennent was able to capture and honestly express in her many paintings and drawings the subtle charm and quiet grace and dignity of the Hawaiian people; and.

WHEREAS, Madge Tennent was a warm and generous person, who gave often and generously of her works to friends and to charity; and.

WHEREAS, Madge Tennent, having spent a half century in Hawaii, leaves behind a rich legacy of art, which shall forever belong to Hawaii; and therefore,.

Madge Tennent gave her life effort and her great talent to the elaboration of this vision.