Poul August Plum (1815-1876), Hawaiian women in a canoe selling fruit to the crew of the "Galathea"

Poul August Plum (1815-1876)
Hawaiian women in a canoe selling fruit to the crew of the "Galathea"
signed with initials 'A.P.' (lower right), signed and inscribed 'Poul Aug. Plum Galatea' (on the stretcher)
oil on canvas
28 x 38in. (71.1 x 96.5cm.)
Poul August Plum was the official artist on the first Galathea voyage, a Danish political, commercial and scientific expedition which circumnavigated the globe between 1845 and 1847. Recognised at the time in his native Copenhagen for genre scenes, Plum was tasked with visually documenting the landscapes and, to a greater extent, peoples the Galathea encountered on her voyage.

The three-masted ship and its crew of 231, including five scientists and two artists, under the captaincy of Steen Andersen Bille, sailed from Copenhagen on 24 June 1845. She made her first landfall at Madeira in July before proceeding south to round the Cape and sail on to India. Here, Bille had been instructed to witness the transfer of the Danish colonies of Tranquebar (Tharangambadi, Tamil Nadu) on the Coromandel coast, and Serampore in West Bengal to the British East India Company. Early 1846 was spent across the Bay of Bengal in the Nicobar Islands (administered by the Danes from Tranquebar) which, by royal decree, they planned to re-colonise following their abandonment due to outbreaks of malaria. The Galathea sailed on to south east Asia, mooring at Penang, Singapore, Batavia (Jakarta), and Manila before turning northwards and running along the Chinese coast. She visited Hong Kong, Macau, Canton, Amoy and Shanghai, and crossed the Pacific to Hawaii in August-September 1846. Fine drawings and watercolours by Plum, many dated, now in the collection of the M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark, Helsingør, chart their progress.

After a gruelling two-month crossing of the Japan Sea, during which many of the crew developed scurvy, the Galathea dropped anchor off Honolulu, Hawaii at 9 o'clock on the morning of Monday, 5 October 1846. She was the first Danish man-of-war to visit the islands. Tasked to set up a favoured trading nation agreement with Hawaii, Bille signed a treaty of peace and trading cooperation between the nations of Hawaii and Denmark on 19 October 1846. The Galathea remained at Hawaii until she finally weighed anchor on 16 November 1846. During the stay, Plum compiled hundreds of portraits of the native Hawaiians. Notable sitters were King Kamehameha III and Queen Kalama (portraits now in the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Honolulu), the latter, according to Cornelius Schmidt (a crew member of the Galathea), ‘liked the portrait of her that an artist of the Galathea had painted so much that she embraced him.’ (J. Jensen, 'A Danish Sailor’s View of Hawaii in 1846', The Hawaiian Journal of History, vol. 30, 1996, p.112).

The present picture is a rare finished painting worked up from his drawings and sketches. Although there are no direct studies for this picture at Helsingør, there are two extant smaller oil sketches (art market). Three young Hawaiian women have come out in a Hawaiian outrigger canoe to meet the Galathea and sell fruits to the crew. The women, clad in 'silk and satin' are not in native costume, although their faces are prettily framed with native maile vine leaves and ferns that feature in many of Plum's portraits taken at Honolulu (and later at Tahiti and Bora Bora).

The Galathea sailed on from Hawaii south to Tahiti, and then east to the South American Pacific coast, running along the ports of Lima, Callao and Valparaiso. She rounded Cape Horn, and visited Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro and finally Bahia before returning to Copenhagen in August 1847. The death of King Christian VIII and the wars with Germany which followed the Galathea's return to Copenhagen meant that the results and accounts of the voyage remained unpublished. Plum, assisted by sketch artist Christian Thornam, produced a large number of drawings, in variously worked stages, during the voyage, which provided an important visual record of the circumnavigation. A handful of Plum's drawings were lithographed for Steen Bille's account of the voyage Beretningen om Corvetten Galathea's Reise omkringjorden 1845, 46, 47, 3 vol., Copenhagen, 1849-51 (and for the second and German abridged editions). His original drawings and artwork remained otherwise long forgotten and unpublished, until a collection was acquired by the M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark, Helsingor, and a selection of the Hawaiian sheets from the museum included by David W. Forbes in his Encounters with Paradise Views of Hawaii and its People 1778-1941 (Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, 1992).

We are grateful to Line Hallbjørnsson at the M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark, Helsingør, for granting access to the Plum drawings in the museum's collection.