Tyree

Ralph Burke Tyree was an American artist who was a prolific portrait artist of the South Pacific peoples of the 20th century. He was from central California and his art education took place in San Francisco (California College of Arts and Crafts and California School of Fine Arts). Seven weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor he joined the Marines and was soon shipped off to Samoa. Private Tyree was befriended by his Commanding General and became the Marine-base artist. His portrait art career began painting the officers and their loved ones, while corresponding with 10,000 word love letters to his girlfriend Margo back home in Turlock, California. His works were exhibited at the de Young museum in San Francisco on multiple occasions. After the war he married Margo, started a family, and began his professional career. He traveled back to the South Pacific to live for years in places such as Guam, Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island of Hawaii. Often from there he would travel to other island paradises: Palau, Fiji, Tahiti, Samoa, and the Solomon Islands over his thirty-year career. Most of his first works were sensual island wahines in island beach and jungle settings. He painted primarily with oils on board but also occasionally on canvas and with pastels. To add depth and texture, he switched in mid-career to painting with oils on fine, French silk, black velvet. This was in the midst of the 1960s' Tiki revolution and many of his nude pieces would be displayed in Tiki bars and restaurants. Tyree was likely the most prolific South Pacific and Tiki artist of the 20th century. In the 1970s, he started painting endangered animals to call attention to their limited numbers. He died suddenly of a heart attack at age fifty seven in 1979. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY CJ Cook is an author and historian, who has a long interest in the history of South Pacific. He has written many articles including publishing biographical sketches on historical figures. Cook is a lifelong manuscript collector who has special interest in art, poetry, Hawaii and the South Pacific. He is a board member of a prominent manuscript association, dedicated to preserving manuscripts, historical documents and the written word. He also is a collector of art and artists of the South Pacific including Ralph Burke Tyree, Edgar Leeteg, Edithe Beutler, Madge Tennent, Cece Rodriguez, and William Bloom. Some of the pieces illustrated in this biography are from the author's collection. And finally he has and continues to explore the South Pacific including: Guam, Pohnpei, Truk, Palau, Bali, Tahiti and its surrounding islands, New Zealand, Australia and its Great Barrier Reef, Taiwan, and the Hawaiian Islands. The latter paradise he visits multiple times a year. AUTHOR HOME: Poway, CA