CONSTANCE GORDON-CUMMING (1837–1924),
Halemaʻumaʻu (1,076 m - 3,530 ft)
United States of America (Hawai'i)
In Halemaumau,1879, ink wash with white heightening over traces of graphite,
Honolulu Museum of art
The volcano
Halemaʻumaʻu Crater ((1,076 m - 3,530 ft) - six syllables pronounced HAH-lay-MAH-oo-MAH-oo- is a pit crater located within the much larger summit caldera of Kīlauea in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The roughly circular crater was 770 meters (2,530 ft) x 900 m (2,950 ft) prior to collapses that roughly doubled the size of the crater after May 3, 2018. Halemaʻumaʻu is home to Pele, goddess of fire and volcanoes, according to the traditions of Hawaiian religion.
The crater until recently contained an active lava lake. From 2008, when the current vent inside Halemaʻumaʻu crater first erupted, to April 2015, lava was present inside the vent, fluctuating from 20 to 150 meters below the crater rim. On April 24, 2015 molten lava in the vent, known as the Overlook Crater, became directly visible for the first time from the Jaggar Museum overlook at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, when the lava rose to an all-time high level since the Overlook Crater first opened. A few days later, on April 29, the lava started spilling over the rim of the Overlook Crater and onto the floor of Halemaʻumaʻu Crater, ultimately adding a layer of lava approximately 30 feet (9 m) thick to the crater floor.
For three years from 2015 to 2018 the lava lake level remained close to the rim, with a further minor overflow event in October 2016 and a significant one in April 2018 that covered a majority of the crater floor in new lava. In early May 2018 the lava level in the Overlook Crater dropped over 700 feet and out of sight, resulting in explosions, earthquakes and large clouds of ash and toxic gas, causing closure of the Kīlauea summit area of the national park from May 10 to September 22. While the park visitor center and headquarters have reopened to the public, the crater is currently in a state of collapse that includes substantial portions of Kīlauea Caldera. The Jaggar Museum overlooking the crater remains closed.
The painter
Constance Frederica “Eka” Gordon-Cumming was a noted Scottish travel writer and painter. Born in a wealthy family, she travelled around the world and painted described scenes and life as she saw them.
Constance Gordon-Cumming was a prolific landscape painter, mostly in Asia and the Pacific. She painted over a thousand watercolors and worked with a motto to ‘never a day without at least one careful-coloured sketch’ starting her day at 5 am while in India. Places she visited include Australia, New Zealand, America, China, and Japan.
She arrived in Hilo, Hawaii in October 1879, and was among the first artists to paint the active volcanoes. Her Hawaii travelogue, Fire Fountains: The Kingdom of Hawaii, was published in Edinburgh in 1883. She had several dangerous moments but her travel ended in 1880 when the Montana that she was on ran into rocks at Holyhead. While most of the passengers took the lifeboat, she stayed on last along with the captain to save her paintings and was rescued many hours later. She returned to live at Crieff with her widowed sister Eleanor and continued to write books.
Her best known books are At Home in Fiji and A Lady's Cruise on a French Man-of-War. The latter book resulted from an invitation to join a French ship put into service for the Bishop of Samoa so that he could visit remote parts of his far-flung diocese.
Miss Gordon-Cumming received much criticism from male writers of the era, perhaps because she did not fit in the traditional Victorian role of women, as she often traveled alone and unaided.
In any case, her landscape drawings and watercolors seem to be universally admired.
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2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
