Juliette May Fraser







Juliette May Fraser (January 27, 1887 – July 31, 1983) was an American painter, muralist and printmaker. She was born in Honolulu, which was then the capital city of the Kingdom of Hawaii. After graduating from Wellesley College with a degree in art, she returned to Hawaii for several years. She continued her studies with Eugene Speicher and Frank DuMond at the Art Students League of New York and at the John F. Carlson School of Landscape Painting in Woodstock, New York. She returned to Hawaii to teach, like her parents who had both come to Hawaii as educators. Fraser designed the Hawaii Sesquicentennial half dollar, which was sculpted by Chester Beach and issued in 1928.

In 1934, during the Great Depression, Fraser was invited to create a work of art for the Hawaii State Library by the Works Progress Administration. For three months she received $35 a week to work on the project. When the funds ran out, she continued on her own until ten murals were completed. Fraser also created murals for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition (now installed in lobby of the Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii at Manoa) and the Ypapandi (or Ypapanti) Chapel on Chios Island in Greece. She died in Honolulu in 1983.

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Hawaii State Art Museum, Hawaii State Library, Honolulu Museum of Art, Isaacs Art Center, Library of Congress (Washington, D. C.), Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Missouri) and University of Hawaii at Manoa are among the public collections holding works by Juliette May Fraser.