Treasure Trove

Ward Village’s new tower, Victoria Place, is home to more than 60 works by world-class artists, including this stunning sculpture by Jun Kaneko located in the Lauhala Pool House.

Step into the new Victoria Place along Ala Moana Boulevard, and you’ll find more than luxury residences and posh amenity spaces. Look beyond the panoramic ocean and Diamond Head views to discover a treasure trove of rare art located close to home: Victoria Place is home to more than 60 works by world-class artists, including Satoru Abe, Pegge Hopper, Madge Tennent, Shirley Russell, John Young and others. In fact, this assemblage of works by local artists is among the largest private collections on O‘ahu.

“Victoria Place seamlessly blends classic and contemporary, showcasing a vibrant regional art collection that celebrates our local talent and culture,” says Doug Johnstone, president of the Hawai‘i region for Howard Hughes. “This thoughtfully curated collection incorporates a living gallery, where art and the community within the building can come together.”

“It was an honor to curate a collection that simultaneously reflects the warmth of a kama‘āina home while celebrating artists who practiced in Hawai‘i between the late 1800s to today,” says Ann Benson Reidy, of ABR + Associates, who helped curate the Victoria Place collection. “[This includes] the Seven Sisters sculptures by John Koga, inspired by the residence’s namesake, Victoria Ward, and her seven daughters — Mary, Liliha, Ha‘alelea, Kamāmalu, Kapi‘olani, Abigail and Elizabeth.”

John Koga’s *Seven Sisters* on display on Victoria Place’s ground floor gallery.

Victoria Place’s diverse collection of works is a timeless showcase of the unique beauty of Hawai‘i. Consider the Double Portrait (1952) of two women by Madge Tennent, who was a renowned art educator and Hawai‘i’s answer to Paul Gauguin. A former child prodigy who studied under French realist William-Adolphe Bouguereau at the Académie Julian in Paris, Tennent was exposed to works by the likes of Cézanne, Picasso and Renoir as a teenager before settling in Honolulu in 1923.

With her grand brushwork, she portrayed her subjects as equally alluring and majestic. In her imagery, distinctive portrait subjects are given heroic proportions and powerful features. A prominent art figure on the international stage, Tennent would become among the most significant individual contributors to Hawaiian art during the 20th century.

Another classically trained artist, Pegge Hopper, studied painting at the Los Angeles Art Center College of Design before working commercially for Raymond Loewy Associates in New York City (designer of the Coca-Cola bottle, among other iconic creations) in the 1950s, and as an illustrator for the luxury department chain La Rinascente in Milan in the early ’60s.

After moving to Honolulu in 1963, she worked as an art director at a local creative agency before being inspired to paint again after seeing photographs of Hawaiian women in King Kalākaua’s photo collection at the state archives. She became known for her vibrant paintings of women sitting or lying in repose, often in thoughtful contemplation. Three such women can be found in an untitled diptych by Hopper on Victoria Place’s upper-level spa lobby, where guests are also invited to relax before or after a spa visit or dip in the pool perhaps.

*The* *Net Fisherman* by Lionel Walden located on Victoria Place’s ground-level mauka elevator lobby.

Satoru Abe’s *Sunrise to Sunset* in Victoria Place’s Palm Garden.

For artwork by “the finest seascape painter to work in [Hawai‘i],” according to author and historian David W. Forbes, look no further than The Net Fisherman by Lionel Walden in Victoria Place’s mauka ground-level lobby. An accomplished figure in the art salons of Paris (and an inductee to the French Legion of Honor), Walden first arrived in the Islands in 1911 and was instantly entranced by Hawai‘i’s colorful scenery. While many of his contemporaries were focused on the landscapes of Hawai‘i, Walden looked to the seas. He painted the Pacific Ocean in all its many moods, particularly during stormy weather amid surging tides and crashing waves.

Walden is considered one of the three giants of art in Hawai‘i along with Madge Tennent and David Howard Hitchcock, the latter of whom became one of the earliest artists to paint the Waimea Canyon on Kaua‘i. Born in Hilo and a graduate of Punahou, Hitchcock studied painting in Paris before returning to the Islands in 1893. Known for his larger-than-life murals of island scenes, Hitchcock exhibited works at the opening of the Honolulu Academy of Arts (today the Honolulu Museum of Art) in 1927, as well as the World’s Fair in New York. The artist’s Diamond Head graces Victoria Place’s makai ground-level lobby.

Another Paris student (who also studied under Lionel Walden) is Shirley Russell, a painter and printmaker who specialized in oil paintings with an Impressionist style. Russell brought tropical flowers to life on the canvas with her bright colors and was a frequent exhibitor at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, as well as in Tokyo and Paris. Two of her paintings — Cup of Gold Flowers and Hawaiian Gardenias — add a scenic warmth to Victoria Place’s private dining area on the fifth floor.

In addition to painting, Russell taught art for 23 years at nearby McKinley High School; her students included other notable local artists, such as Satoru Abe and John Chin Young. Abe and Young were both members of the “Metcalf Chateau,” an influential group of Hawai‘i artists who shared exhibition space and a studio on Metcalf Street. Both were Abstract Expressionists who traveled extensively (Abe studied at the prestigious Art Students League in New York City and Young taught himself art while traveling between Paris each spring and Hong Kong each fall); works by both artists can also be found at Victoria Place. Abe’s sculpture Sunrise to Sunset can be found as a focal point in the Palm Garden, while Young’s Moonscape and Ko‘olau Abstract can be found along the corridors.

Victoria Place boasts a rare collection of art by Hawai‘i artists with pride. For elegant works depicting island life in all its diverse and beautiful forms, it doesn’t get better than this.