Hon Chew Hee

Hon Chew Hee was born in 1906 in Kahului, on the island of Maui, in the then Territory of Hawaii. From about age five to fifteen he lived in Zhongshan, Guangdong, in China, where he received his first formal training in traditional Chinese brush painting and calligraphy. He returned to Hawaii around 1921.

His formal Western art training began in California. He worked as a part-time student at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco starting around 1929. He then taught art in China before returning permanently to Hawaii around 1935. He also studied at the Art Students League of New York and at Columbia University, though the exact years of that study are not documented. From about 1948 to 1951 he trained in Paris with Fernand Leger and Andre Lhote, and, per one auction house account, with George Grotz.

Back in Hawaii, Hee became a central figure in the local art community. He founded the Chinese Art Association in 1935 and, in 1962, the Hawaii Watercolor Society, becoming known for a pioneering wet-on-wet watercolor technique. In 1986 the Hawaii State Legislature named him Artist of the Year, and in 1987 the Hawaii Watercolor Society dedicated its 25th Silver Jubilee Exhibition to him. He died in 1993 in Hawaii, according to multiple biographical sources on the island of Oahu, with Wikipedia specifying Castle Hospital; the exact day and month of his death are not securely documented in accessible obituaries or art press and are treated here with appropriate caution.

Contemporary critical coverage of Hon Chew Hee is thin in the accessible record. A January 1960 Honolulu Star-Bulletin review, titled "High Level of Competence Shown in Exhibit of Chinese Paintings," discussed an exhibition at the Shelagh Scoville Gallery that included his work, but the full text of that review could not be located, so no verbatim critical assessment can be reproduced here. His standing instead rests on institutional recognition: founding two artist organizations, the Hawaii State Legislature's 1986 Artist of the Year honor, and the Hawaii Watercolor Society's 1987 decision to dedicate its Silver Jubilee Exhibition to him. Auction house catalogue notes, including from Sotheby's and Bonhams, consistently frame him as a significant bridge figure between Chinese brush painting and American modernism, though these are dealer and specialist descriptions rather than independent art criticism.

Hon Chew Hee's market is small and largely local to Hawaii and Hawaii-adjacent auction sales, with occasional appearances in Chinese art sales in Hong Kong reflecting his Chinese heritage and training. His documented all-time auction high is Good Table, an oil painted circa the 1950s, which sold for USD 51,200 including premium at Bonhams' Art of Hawaii sale in Los Angeles; the exact sale date is not documented in accessible sources. Other lots, including works offered by Sotheby's Hong Kong and a Bonhams-catalogued Hawaii sale, have carried estimates in the tens of thousands of dollars but no higher confirmed realized price has surfaced as of this writing. No gallery or estate is currently documented as representing him; his work reaches the market chiefly through regional auction houses and dealers, including Gallery 817 in Honolulu.

Hon Chew Hee has no catalogue raisonne and no current gallery or estate representation, so provenance research and auction house cataloguing are the main tools for verifying a given work; a historic "Gallery on the Pali, Honolulu" label documented on one painting sold at Sotheby's illustrates how attribution has traditionally been supported. His confirmed auction record, USD 51,200 for Good Table at Bonhams, sits well below asking prices cited by at least one Hawaii dealer, which have been reported as high as USD 150,000; that dealer figure is not an auction result and should not be treated as a market benchmark. Given the small number of public sales, collectors should expect price behavior to be driven by the specific work and venue rather than by a smooth market trend, and should treat any single high estimate with caution until a comparable result is realized at auction.