The Crater of Kilauea, Island of Hawaii

Jules Tavernier's The Crater of Kilauea, Island of Hawaii (1885) is one of the landmark works of Hawaiian volcano painting, depicting the vast caldera of Kīlauea at a moment of eruptive activity. Tavernier was a French-born, San Francisco-based painter who spent his final years in Hawaii, captivated by the volcanic landscape that had no European equivalent. His large-scale volcanic landscapes were shown in Paris, London, and across America, bringing the spectacular Hawaiian scenery to audiences who had never seen it. Kilauea was among the most active volcanoes on earth, and Tavernier's dramatic vision of glowing lava, steam, and molten rock was both scientifically fascinating and pictorially overwhelming. The work is at the Russell-Cotes in Bournemouth.

The composition is organized around the luminous glow of the active lava and the steam columns rising from the crater, using the darkness of the surrounding basalt to intensify the volcanic light. Tavernier employs dramatic tonal contrast — brilliant orange and red against near-black — to convey the elemental power of the eruption. The scale of the caldera dwarfs any human element.