Although his works rarely gain attention from modern readers and scholars, James Jackson Jarves's contributions both as a travel writer and an art critic were substantial in his lifetime. Jarves was a restless and energetic man who, as his biographer Francis Steegmuller aptly notes, led symbolically two lives, each seemingly distinct and each equally intriguing. In one life he became a charter member of the American Oriental Society and the first historian of the Hawaiian Islands, an effort which remains seminal. In another life Jarves became an honorary member of the Florentine Academy of Fine Arts and builder of the most substantial American collections of Italian Old Masters paintings in the nineteenth century. Within these two lives Jarves also grasped the opportunity to become one of the preeminent American travel writers of his time.

Jarves was born on 20 August 1818 to Deming and Anna Stutson Jarves in Boston. Deming...