<p>Ralph Burke Tyree was an American artist who was the most prolific portrait artist of the South Pacific peoples of the 20th century. He was from central California and his art education took place in San Francisco. Seven weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor he joined the Marines and was soon shipped off to Samoa. Private Tyree was befriended by his Commanding General and became the Marine-base artist. His portrait career began painting the officers and their loved ones, while corresponding with 10,000 word love letters to his girlfriend Margo back home in Turlock, California. After the war he began his professional career. He traveled back to the South Pacific to live for years in places such as Guam, Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island of Hawaii. Often from there he would travel to other island paradises: Palau, Fiji, Tahiti, Samoa, and the Solomon Islands over his thirty-year career. Most of his first works were sensual island wahines in island beach and jungle settings. He painted primarily with oil on board but also occasionally on canvas and with pastels. To add depth and texture, he switched in mid-career to painting with oil on fine, French silk, black velvet. This was in the midst of the 1960s' Tiki revolution and many of his nude pieces would be displayed in Tiki bars and restaurants. Tyree was likely the most prolific South Pacific and Tiki artist of the 20th century. In the 1970s, he started painting endangered animals to call attention to their limited numbers. He died suddenly of a heart attack at age fifty seven in 1979. In the 20th century after WWII, Ralph Burke Tyree led the transformation and appreciation of the South Pacific’s serene beauty with his art. Furthermore, he was the premier artist in American iconic movement of the Tiki revolution which emanated from Hawaii and California. He likely painted thousands of different pieces, initially oils on board, mostly wahines, au naturale. Starting in 1960 he switched to oils on black velvet with the portraiture nudity, more demure or sometimes a silhouette in a jungle scene. Tyree was a dreamer who painted idealized women in idyllic South Pacific landscapes, the faces of wizened island men and later exotic animals. His portraiture, whether of humans or animals, captured their quiet, gentle spirit.</p>

Tyree: Artist of the South Pacific (Artists of the South Pacific)

Arts & Photography

Cook, CJ

History & Criticism

South Pacific Dreams Publishing

<p>Throughout his life, shrewd promoter and creative genius Edgar Leeteg possessed many titles, astounding fans and antagonizing critics. Considered the "American Gauguin," he originated the modern technique of oil painting on black velvet. Once memorialized by James Michener as an original rascal in paradise. This is a biography of the artist Leeteg, who left California in 1933 bound for the South Pacific. His home in Tahiti allowed him to paint nudes, drink, and party with sensual vahines from the beaches to the bars of Tahiti. Leeteg described himself as a "fornicating, gin-soaked, dope head" and all the artists and writers of the South Pacific knew of him. He took on the elite of the art establishment of Honolulu Academy of Arts in 1938 and shamed them in the press. He was a wealthy artist and legend in his lifetime, a goal few can achieve. Tourists visiting Tahiti would seek him out for his generosity of wine, women, and song on his Shangri-la-like estate called Villa Velour on his quiet isle. He was the father of black velvet art and the genesis of a genre continuing today with the tiki and Polynesian pop art movement, nearly 70 years later.</p>

Leeteg: Babes, Bars, Beaches, and Black Velvet Art (Artists of the South Pacific)

MICHAEL ASHLEY

Beauty in the Beast: Flora, Fauna, and Endangered Species of Artist Ralph Burke Tyree (Artists of the South Pacific)

Herbert, Paige

Individual Artists

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