THE FACES BEHIND ʻIOLANI PALACE

Teresa Davis

Sep 21

4 min read

Discovering Hawaiʻi’s Royal History Through the Portraits on the Walls

By Teresa Davis | Travel & Lifestyle Explorer

A royal portrait surrounded by the beautiful blue furnishings inside ʻIolani Palace.

The People Looking Back From the Walls

Walking through ʻIolani Palace, it wasn’t only the architecture and furnishings that caught my attention. Portrait after portrait filled the rooms, and I found myself photographing many of the faces connected to Hawaiʻi’s royal past. Looking back at these photographs years later made me curious all over again: Who were these people, how were they connected, and what part did they play in the story of the Hawaiian Kingdom?

The Palace itself says that fourteen portraits of Hawaiian monarchs and their consorts hang on its walls. Rather than treating them simply as decoration, I began looking at the portraits as another way of understanding the people who once shaped life inside this extraordinary royal residence.

A historic group photograph I photographed inside ʻIolani Palace.

This historic group photograph was one of the images that caught my attention during my visit. I have not been able to positively establish the identities of every person in this particular photograph from the Palace’s online documentation, so I am leaving the individuals unnamed rather than guessing. The Palace notes that historic photographs from the monarchy era are important records of the people, rooms and events of the period.

King Kalākaua: The King Who Built the Palace

One name is impossible to separate from ʻIolani Palace: King David Kalākaua. He was elected king in 1874 and reigned for seventeen years. During his reign, he pursued a vision of strengthening Hawaiʻi’s international relationships, economy and national life. The present ʻIolani Palace was completed in 1882 under his reign and became the official royal residence as well as a center of political and social life.

Kalākaua also traveled internationally and became the first head of state to circumnavigate the globe. Inside the Palace, his story appears not only through the building he commissioned, but through portraits, furnishings, music, royal orders and personal objects that help visitors understand the world in which he lived.

A royal portrait displayed above the Palace piano - a reminder that music and royal life were closely connected at ʻIolani Palace.

The Palace’s Blue Room contains matching portraits of King Kalākaua and his sister, Queen Liliʻuokalani, painted by American portraitist William Cogswell. Because I cannot verify from the photograph alone which individual appears in every portrait I captured, I am not assigning a name to this particular painting without stronger documentation.

Queen Liliʻuokalani: Sister, Successor and Last Reigning Monarch

Queen Liliʻuokalani was King Kalākaua’s sister and successor. After Kalākaua died in January 1891, she succeeded him as monarch. Her reign became one of the most consequential periods in Hawaiian history. She sought to strengthen the political authority of the monarchy, faced organized opposition, and was deposed when the Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown in January 1893.

Her connection to ʻIolani Palace became even more personal and painful in 1895. After an unsuccessful royalist effort to restore her to power, she was arrested, tried by a military tribunal in the Palace’s Throne Room and imprisoned in an upstairs room. Today, her story remains central to the history interpreted at the Palace.

One of the best-documented portraits in the Palace is Liliʻuokalani’s 1892 portrait by William Cogswell. The Palace explains that she is shown wearing the ribbon gown she had worn during Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887, along with the Royal Order of Kalākaua and a diamond butterfly brooch. The portrait is displayed in the Blue Room alongside Cogswell’s portrait of Kalākaua.

Generations of Hawaiian Royalty

Two of the many portraits that line the walls of ʻIolani Palace.

Another pair of portraits I photographed while walking through the Palace.

These paired portraits were another reminder that the story inside ʻIolani Palace extends beyond Kalākaua and Liliʻuokalani. The Palace’s portrait collection represents generations of Hawaiian monarchs and their consorts. I have not found enough official online documentation to positively match each of these four photographed portraits to a name, so I am intentionally leaving them unidentified in this draft. If stronger Palace documentation becomes available, their names and individual histories can be added before publication.

More Than Decoration

What I appreciate now is that the portraits made the Palace feel inhabited by history. The elaborate frames, formal clothing, royal decorations and carefully posed images communicate status, but the faces also make the history more personal. These were people connected by family, succession, responsibility and a changing political world.

ʻIolani Palace was completed in 1882 and remained a royal residence until the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893. Seeing the portraits alongside the rooms, furniture and personal objects helped connect those dates to actual lives.

Teresa’s Take

When I first toured ʻIolani Palace, I photographed these portraits because they were beautiful and because there were so many of them throughout the Palace. Looking at the pictures again years later gave me a different appreciation for what I had seen. The Palace is impressive on its own, but learning more about the people represented on its walls adds another layer to the experience.

If you visit, take time to look beyond the rooms themselves. Notice the portraits. Notice the names. And if one of those faces makes you curious, learn the story behind it. That curiosity can turn a photograph from a travel memory into a doorway to history.