Esther Bruton's work for Dole Pineapple

Esther Bruton painting a mural for Dole Pineapple Company, ca. 1936
Bruton Family Archive

Esther Bruton was trained as a commercial artist. In 1918 she earned a degree from the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (now known as the Parsons School of Design). She started her professional art career illustrating fashion advertisements for the I. Magnin department store in San Francisco. During the 1930s, she was hired to paint murals in department stores and office buildings. But her elegant, sophisticated, and humorous style was especially in demand in bars and cocktail lounges. She once quipped, "I have done so many [murals in] bars that one would think they are my speciality."

Esther had an interesting commercial commission in 1936. She was hired by the Dole Pineapple Company to paint murals and screens that were featured in the background of their print ads. Esther had never been to Hawaii, but her four-month trip to Tahiti in 1924 helped provide inspiration. 

All of the work was done in California. It's unclear how many screens and murals she painted as part of this ad campaign, but I've been able to identify just a few. 

The above ad features an elegantly dressed couple drinking pineapple juice in front of one of Esther murals. The small writing at the top of the ad reads "Mural-screen painted by Bruton." A side-by-side comparison reveals that this is probably the mural Esther is painting in the photo:

A second ad shows a different artwork in the background. This one features Hollywood actors Eleanore Whitney and Johnny Downs serving pineapple juice to some children. The text in the lower left corner reads "Mural screen by Esther Bruton."

On a recent trip to Honolulu, I had the pleasure of viewing one of the screens that Esther painted as part of the Dole Pineapple campaign. This work is in the collection of Michael Horikawa, who during the past 40 years has assembled a large and significant collection of Hawaiian art, including this stunning piece by Esther Bruton. 

Although I had seen photos of this work, nothing could prepare me for how beautiful it is in person. It's in excellent condition and much larger than I expected. The gold and silver leaf used in the pond is remarkable, as well as Esther's detailed treatment of the foliage. 

There are stripes of silver leaf throughout the background that I hadn't noticed before. To me, they resemble bands of sunlight filtering through the thick foliage.

All in all, I was blown away by the beauty of this screen. Yet, I haven't seen this particular work in the background of any of the Dole Pineapple ads. It's very similar to the screen in the ad with Eleanore Whitney and Johnny Downs, but not quite an exact match. Perhaps this screen was used in an ad that I haven't discovered yet. Or, as Michael Horikawa suggested, perhaps it was made for a private individual who admired Esther's work for Dole and commissioned something similar for their home.

So far, I have identified only three artworks that were part of Esther's commercial work for Dole. Are there others? If so, where are they? Could they be somewhere in Dole's possession? As I have learned over the years, you just never know where things might turn up.

As an interesting side note, Georgia O'Keeffe was also hired by Dole in 1939, just a few years after Esther. (You can read an article about an exhibition of her Hawaii paintings held at the New York Botanical Gardens in 2018.) Unlike Esther, O'Keeffe spent three months in Hawaii to get inspiration for her paintings. She took a very different approach than Esther did, focusing -- unsurprisingly -- on close-ups of Hawaiian flowers. She painted these two works for the Dole campaign:

Although we don't often think of Georgia O'Keeffe as a commercial artist, I'm sure the income from the Dole campaign was helpful to her -- as it was to Esther Bruton -- during the depression years. 

I've been able to draw several threads between Esther Bruton and Georgia O'Keeffe: they were in the Taos at the same time (1929) and worked on the same advertising campaign a few laters. I hope to learn more about the possible connections between these two artists in the future.