Statues of Kamehameha I
multiple statues of Kamehameha I
Several Kamehameha statues honor the monarch who founded the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Original work
The pictured statue stands prominently in front of Aliʻiolani Hale in Honolulu, Hawaii. The statue had its origins in 1878 when Walter M. Gibson, a member of the Hawaiian government at the time, wanted to commemorate the 100-year arrival of Captain Cook to the Hawaiian Islands. The legislature appropriated $10,000 for the project and made Gibson the director of the project, which originally included native Hawaiians but they soon were off the project and Gibson ran the project by himself. Gibson contacted Thomas R. Gould, a Boston sculptor living abroad in Florence, Italy to create the statue.
Features
Gould apparently relied mostly on a bust portrait of an elderly Kamehameha, an engraving of "Tamea-mea" that was a thirdhand copy printed in d'Urville's book (1834). But he was also requested to make the monarch appear as a 45-year-old, at the request of the monument committee. Gould was also provided photographs of Polynesians to assist in the visualization. But due to the fact that Gould was in Italy studying Roman sculpture, he adopted the stance of a Roman general with gesturing hand, spear, and cape are also Roman appropriations for the Hawaiian king. The belt or sash on the statue's waist is a symbolic rendering of the Sacred Sash of Liloa.
The public source identifies “Statues of Kamehameha I” as multiple statues of Kamehameha I. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Statues, Kamehameha and multiple.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6356556. Authority coordinates are 21.306, -157.860. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1878 and 1834.
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This entry incorporates text from “Statues of Kamehameha I” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.