Henry Nappenbach: Honolulu Fish Market

SCHOLARSHIP AUCTION 2009
Artist:  Henry Nappenbach
Title: Honolulu Fish Market
Medium: watercolor and gouache
Dimensions: 12" x 22"
Date: 1899

Thanks to the generosity of the donor, an extremely rare early watercolor and gouache of Hawai'i is offered. Honolulu Fish Market is signed, upper right, and dated 1899, when it was presented to a friend of the artist. It measures 12” x 22”.

Mornings at the Honolulu fish market were always busy, colorful, and prosperous. This gem of a vintage watercolor and gouache captures all the energy and excitement of local buyers ordering their favorite fresh fish: ahi, aku, mahimahi, akule, moi, and he’e. Bedecked with flower leis and feather-banded hats, women and men dressed in their “holo holo” best and enjoyed the activity and people at the downtown markets. At the center of this scene is a remarkable figure who sashays toward the counter in her short white holoku that she lifts to reveal a well-turned ankle. With his perceptive eye and facile brushwork, Nappenbach caught her attitude and mannerisms to perfection. A newspaper artist by profession, he quickly rendered the defining characteristics of every person and object in the market, from the identifiable ti-wrapped fish to the vintage hats, mu’umu’u, and the bristly beard and white jacket on the man in the foreground.

Nappenbach used a photographic “slice of life” view, a diagonal composition that shows the buyers in profile milling around the angled counter. His attention to caricature, to vivid colors and specific details reveal Nappenbach’s mastery of his medium and his ability to capture the picturesque.

Henry Nappenbach (German, 1862-1931) was a newspaper artist, now an all-but-vanished occupation. He was born in Bavaria in 1862 and studied art in Munich. While there he was hired by a San Francisco lithographer (Max Schmidt) to come to California as an engraver in 1885. He later was a staff artist for the Examiner and painted many city scenes and landscapes in his leisure. “Nap,” as he was generally known, had an interest in the picturesque and the timely, as well as the ability to make a quick and generally accurate sketch with which the paper could inform its readers. Nappenbach lived for many years on the West Coast, but, curious about Hawaii following its annexation, and the movement of American troops to Manila at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, he visited the islands from August 17 to December 12, 1898.

While in Honolulu, he created a few watercolor sketches of Chinatown, including this one. Nappenbach’s watercolors are unusual in Hawaiian painting not only as rare depictions of this Honolulu neighborhood but also some of the very few pre-twentieth-century island genre scenes. Painter, illustrator, and engraver, Nappenbach was sent to NYC in 1918 to manage the art department of the Hearst-owned American where he enjoyed a long career.

Honolulu Fish Market is a rare and remarkable painting of a picturesque time that will be a significant collectible artwork in your collection.

Mr. Thomas D. King