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Lot 34
Frank Montague Moore(1877-1967)View of Waikiki Beach and Diamond Head 24 x 30 in. (60.9 x 76.2 cm)
6 August 2025, 12:00 PDT
Los AngelesSold for US$21,760 inc. premium
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Kathy Wong
Senior Director, Fine Art
Aaron Bastian
Director
Megan Gallagher
Associate Specialist
Catherine Lay
Cataloguer
Frank Montague Moore (1877-1967)
View of Waikiki Beach and Diamond Head
signed 'FM Moore' (lower left)
oil on canvas
24 x 30 in. (60.9 x 76.2 cm)
Painted circa 1920s.
signed 'FM Moore' (lower left)
oil on canvas
24 x 30 in. (60.9 x 76.2 cm)
Painted circa 1920s.
Footnotes
Provenance
Private collection, Sacramento, California.
When Frank Montague Moore arrived in Honolulu in 1922, Waikīkī Beach was in the midst of rapid expansion. Hotels had already been built along the coastline to support an influx of steamship passengers, all while native sports like surfing and outrigger canoeing were gaining widespread popularity. View of Waikīkī Beach and Diamond Head captures a changing landscape on the precipice of a tourism boom.
Before its development at the turn of the century, Waikīkī was once a narrow swath of beach surrounded by wetlands, mudflats and duckponds. Known for its balmy weather and trade winds, Moore dots his composition with emerald-colored coconut palms. Though the beach was home to a few select residences for Hawaiian aliʻi and kamaʻāina, Diamond Head was the most prominent landmark along the shore. In the present lot, Moore captures the subtle curvature of the turquoise bay as it gradually turns cerulean in Diamond Head's shadow. The dramatic ridgeline appears to rise out of the sea like a tuna's dorsal fin, paying homage to its Hawaiian name Lēʻahi. While Diamond Head remains a fixture of Waikīkī's skyline, Moore's perspective of the volcanic tuff cone is one still relatively unobscured by condos and high-rise hotels.
One of the first luxury hotels to open on Waikīkī Beach was the Moana Hotel (today the Moana Surfrider, A Westin Resort & Spa) in March of 1901. Pictured along the center left edge, this 75-guestroom 'high-rise' featured upscale amenities like telephones, private baths, a billiards room, the first electric-powered elevator in the Territory, and adjacent to the property, the timber pier which was demolished in 1930. Moore blends the hotel into Waikīkī's natural landscape by rendering the Moana in the same creamy colors as the white sand beach. Meanwhile, running almost parallel to Diamond Head, the hotel's pier juts into the sea as a smaller yet equal landmark. Together with the Moana, the later construction of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel ushered in the first peak of tourism.
Situated between these two now iconic hotels stood the original location for the Outrigger Canoe Club, a private club founded in 1908 to help revive ancient Hawaiian watersports from extinction. While the clubhouse isn't pictured, the sole figures present in the scene are more than likely its patrons. A four-man canoe is seen paddling alongside the pier and a lone surfer stands at attention with his board at the water's edge, awaiting the arrival of the next set of waves. In addition to efforts by the club to renew interest in native sports over on the Mainland, Olympic swimmer and Waikīkī native Duke Kahanamoku did his part to make sure that surfing in particular was popularized worldwide. The club's mission continues to be one that promotes Hawaiian culture and the spirit of Aloha.
As Waikīkī, and Honolulu as a whole, continued to experience commercial growth, it also began to alter the landscape and cultural balance of the area. The need for a museum to give the gift of art and art education to Hawai'i's diverse, multicultural community arose. The Honolulu Museum of Art, first known as the Honolulu Academy of Arts, was chartered in 1922 and opened to the public in April of 1927 with Frank Montague Moore as its first Director.
Moore's View of Waikīkī Beach and Diamond Head is a postcard-worthy scene that weaves together the natural and man-made landmarks that laid the foundation for Waikīkī to become the global icon of Hawaiian hospitality and sport it is known for today.
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