At the end of his short life (he died at 45), artist Jules Tavernier moved to Hawaii.

Tavernier had already made a name for himself chronicling life in the American West and he would do the same with his paintings of Hawaii’s nature, particularly her volcanoes. His extraordinary ability to work with vivid colors and play with light gave paintings like Kilauea Caldera, Sandwich Islands a mesmerizing beauty that infatuated people who had never been to Hawaii. Like with most of Tavernier’s work, there were pros and cons to this.

On one hand, his work depicts the extraordinarily unique nature of the area. Tavernier reportedly loved the volcano Kilauea, and he did it justice with this image that shows it actively erupting. It reflects a deep reverence for the astounding power of nature. On the other hand, Tavernier’s work inspired more people to visit the island. They, too, wanted to see the beauty he showed them in paintings such as this one. And yet, by coming to the island, they contributed to damaging the very nature that they were there to see. This irony, or double-edged sword, is true of pretty much all of Tavernier’s pieces, from the redwoods of the Bay Area to these Hawaiian volcanoes.

In fact, even the name of the piece, although named somewhat perfunctorily for the volcano itself, alludes to the complicated history of Tavernier’s work. Tavernier knew Hawaii as The Sandwich Islands because that’s what Captain James Cook decided to call them when he “discovered” them. One of Cook’s patrons was John Montague, the earl of Sandwich. This, of course, ignores the rich history of the people living on these islands for hundreds of years before Cook arrived. So, even though Tavernier revered and venerated the nature of this area in his work, he was a product of his time and ignored the locally-given name for the islands, choosing the name Cook had assigned instead.

Nevertheless, his passion for the powerful beauty of this part of the world is undeniable. He had first seen the volcano erupting during a sketching visit to the island in 1885. He immediately wanted to capture every unique element of the volcano from the undulating air of the heat, to the colorful explosions of the flames. In fact, along with just a couple of other artists, he founded The Volcano School to capture exactly their majesty in art. Because of this painting and others like it, he’s considered one of the "Old Masters" of painting Hawaii. 

Kilauea Caldera is unique from many other volcanoes because of the caldera at the top. Basically, these are vibrant red-hot lava pools at the top of the volcano, creating what looks like a lake of fire. This is what Tavernier has captured in the painting. Some of his other paintings of Kilauea include Kilauea Volcano and Rain Forest, New Lake - Volcano of Kilauea, and Kilauea by Moonlight.