Georgia O'Keeffe first visited Hawaii in 1939 at the invitation of the Hawaiian Pineapple Company.
The company invited her to create images for an advertising campaign. During her stay, she traveled through parts of the islands and made paintings of tropical plants, flowers, landscapes, and other local subjects. The trip expanded the geographical range of her subject matter beyond New York and New Mexico.
O'Keeffe produced paintings connected with the Hawaiian experience, including works depicting pineapple and tropical vegetation. The commission did not turn her into a conventional commercial illustrator; instead, she interpreted the islands through her own distinctive, enlarged forms and carefully observed compositions.
The Hawaii visit is sometimes confused with her later New Mexico travels, which became the more enduring association in her biography. Hawaii was a separate episode in 1939, several years after her first major New Mexico visits and before she permanently settled in the Southwest.