A 1939 trip to Hawaii inspired Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings of Hawaiian plants and landscapes. The trip was arranged after the Hawaiian Pineapple Company commissioned her to create images for an advertising campaign.
O'Keeffe spent about nine weeks in Hawaii, visiting several islands and painting subjects such as flowers, plants, cliffs, and waterfalls. She produced a group of works based on what she observed, although the commission also included a pineapple painting made after she returned to New Mexico.
The Hawaiian paintings are sometimes overlooked beside her New Mexico work. They show, however, that O'Keeffe continued to adapt her subjects to unfamiliar environments while preserving her characteristic attention to simplified forms, strong contours, and close-up natural details.