Ralph Burke Tyree
Local Girl, oil on canvas painting by Ralph Burke Tyree, c. 1950
Ralph Burke Tyree (June 30, 1921 – January 15, 1979) was born in Irvine, Kentucky and moved to Delhi, California as an infant. He was awarded a scholarship to the California College of the Arts (Oakland) for a portrait he painted of his future wife, Marguerite (Margo) Almeida and also studied at the San Francisco School of Fine Arts. From 1942 to 1946, he worked as an artist in the public relations department of the United States Marine Corps.[1] He painted in Fiji, the Gilbert Islands, Japan, the Mariana Islands, Samoa, and Japan, prior to moving to Maui in 1964.[2] He is best known for his nude and semi-nude paintings of women of the Pacific islands. Burke Tyree died at age 57 of a massive heart attack in Crows Landing, California.
References
- Severson, Don R. Finding Paradise: Island Art in Private Collections, University of Hawaii Press, 2002, pp. 127–8.