Hawaiian mother and child

In this painting by Mikhail Tikhanov, A Young Girl of the Sandwich Islands, we see a girl cradling a small dog. Her features are striking, and there is a sharp use of shadows, but she has a very soft face. Its round and her cheeks and lips have a pleasant redness to them. Her eyes are unnaturally large, but it adds to the expressiveness of the portrait. Her hair is cut short on top, and left to grow long around the sides. There is lei of yellow plumeria. Around her head is a long red veil that she has wrapped around her naked body. Smiling, she is enveloped in a warm and shimmering rose coloured light.

The portrait invokes similarities with many Virgin Mary with Child portraits. The poise of the head, the tender smile and look, the young puppy sleeping tenderly in her arms, all recall the numerous tributes to maternal love that adorn the walls of any Catholic Church. Her veil, which appears to be made of finely woven kapa and glimmers in the sunlight, also appears to have been painted on as an afterthought. Thrown hastily over her naked body in a style that does not resemble any traditional Hawaiian fashion or appear anywhere else in Mikhail Tikhanov’s work

If you look closely you can see that the painting has undergone several changes in design during its creation. Her front arm goes to nowhere, and the dog appears to have been painted over the original work, probably masking Tikhanov’s constant inability to draw properly proportioned hands. Unlike his other Hawaiian works, this one does not seem to carry any political significance. The religious symbolism, however, is unmistakable.