CONSTANCE GORDON-CUMMING (1837–1924)
Kilauea (1,247 m - 4,091 ft)
United States of America (Hawaii)
In Kilauea Temporary Chimneys and Fire Fountains, watercolor, c.1880
The volcano
Kīlauea (1,247 m-4,091 ft) is a currently active shield volcano in the
Hawaiian Islands, and the most active of the five volcanoes that
together form the island of Hawaiʻi. Located along the southern shore of
the island, the volcano is between 300,000 and 600,000 years old and
emerged above sea level about 100,000 years ago. It is the second
youngest product of the Hawaiian hotspot and the current eruptive center
of the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain. Structurally, Kīlauea has a
large, fairly recently formed caldera at its summit and two active rift
zones, one extending 125 km (78 mi) east and the other 35 km (22 mi)
west, as an active fault of unknown depth moving vertically an average
of 2 to 20 mm (0.1 to 0.8 in) per year.
More about KilaueaThe 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