Madge Tennent

Also known as:

Born in England, she moved with her family to South Africa when she was five, then to Paris when she was twelve where she studied figure drawing.  Returning to South Africa she married and moved to her husband's native New Zealand and subsequently Samoa, and there became fascinated with Polynesians.  She further studied drawing in Australia.  Then In 1923 on their way to England, she and her husband stopped in Hawaii, where they were persuaded to stay.  Tennent helped support her family with commissions to paint and draw portraits of children.  A friend's gift of a book on Gaugin set her on an artistic course that lasted fifty years, during which she portrayed Hawaiian women in a style that increasingly became her own.