Few American artists are as revered as Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams. Upon her death in 1986, The declared O’Keeffe the "undisputed doyenne of American painting." The newspaper also called Adams "an Iron Chef of darkroom cuisine, manipulating every element of the printing of his pictures — lighting, composition, focus and tonal contrast — to get the perfect image."

Both artists visited Hawaii, producing distinctive depictions of island life. Many of these works go on display Thursday at the Hono­lulu Museum of Art in "Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams: The Hawai‘i Pictures." This will be the first exhibit that combines the works of O’Keeffe and Adams, who besides being good friends were also part of a shifting American artistic movement that went beyond New York and the East Coast to the West.

Although it might seem like a no-brainer to pair works by these great masters, it was an entirely different project that led to the exhibit, said Theresa Papanikolas, the museum’s curator of European and American art. She was researching a show on the Art Deco movement in Hawaii as an "exploration of the intersection between the fine and commercial arts" when she came across the names of several artists who did commercial artwork here. Adams’ and O’Keeffe’s works resulted from commissions from private businesses.

Papanikolas was especially intrigued by the fact that the artists are strongly associated with specific places. O’Keeffe’s paintings were inspired by the deserts of New Mexico, and Adams’ photographs portray the beauty of Yosemite and the Sierra Nevadas.

"I became very interested in what happens to these two artists who have such a strong sense of place in their work, what happens when they go to unfamiliar places," she said. "What really fascinates me about those artists’ approach to this place is that, first of all, it’s very unfamiliar. They both immediately try to get away from the clichés. They didn’t want to deal with Waikiki, Diamond Head, hula and all that. They both in their own way wanted to get to the real Hawaii."

O’Keeffe took her time familiarizing herself with island culture, socializing, visiting places like Chinatown and shopping. "Everybody she met gave her a flower, so she started doing this archive of tropical flowers and then eventually felt confident enough and comfortable enough to start painting, and so she started with flowers," Papanikolas said.

ADAMS ALSO took time getting to know Hawaii, but he had to recalibrate his considerable technical knowledge to the island’s color palette.

"Adams was a very famous technician," Papanikolas said. "He was very concerned with the look of his photographs, the contrast between light and dark, and he was a genius at achieving this in Yosemite Valley, where the air is crisp and the rocks are granite.

"When he came to Hawaii, he encountered volcanic stone and misty hazes and all these things that didn’t play well with how he liked to photograph. So he, too, focused on the close-up."

The exhibit includes about 50 Adams photos and 12 O’Keeffe paintings. Five of the O’Keeffe works are from the Hono­lulu Museum of Art’s collection, while the remainder will be coming from mainland museums and private collections.

"That doesn’t sound like a lot, but she only did 19 paintings of Hawaii," Papanikolas said. "There are a lot of great things to see."

O’Keeffe’s most famous paintings, drawn from desert flowers, sun-dried bones and stark landscapes, suggest in their sensual curves and rich tones an almost erotic abstractness. Her Hawaii paintings, however, were created at the behest of the Hawaiian Pineapple Co. Ltd. (later known as Dole Co.) and are for the most part distinctly recognizable paintings of local flowers and landscapes.

The exhibit will strike a personal chord for several people in Hawaii, perhaps none more so than Patricia Jennings Campbell. As the daughter of the manager of the Kaeleku Sugar Plantation in Hana, 12-year-old Patricia Jennings wound up serving as O’Keeffe’s escort for her 10-day visit to the area. Jennings recalls the experience in a memoir titled "Georgia O’Keeffe’s Hawaii" published in 2011.

The girl would become one of the few people to witness O’Keeffe at work, getting to see the beginnings of "Waterfall No. 3, Iao Valley," which depicts a waterfall shrouded in clouds tumbling several levels into the lush valley. The two were visiting the valley and had to take refuge in the Jennings family car when it began to rain. O’Keeffe often painted in her car on the mainland.

"When I had seen oil painting done prior to this, it was more in little dabs and bits," said Campbell, now 86 and living on Hawaii island. "And she just took her brush and the whole side of the mountain just seemed to flow onto the canvas. I was just amazed at the speed and the ease at which she applied the oil paint."

O’Keeffe’s personality, outspoken and perceptive, left a deep impression on the young girl.

"I was very, very taken with her in many ways," Campbell said, "It was a terrible letdown when she left. I guess I grew up a lot in those 10 days. I just knew that it was time I left Hana and get to Punahou (School) and start living my life."

Adams also had encounters with youngsters in Hawaii. He first came to the islands in 1948 to take photographs for a series on national parks for the Department of the Interior and returned several times in 1957 and 1958 for a commemorative publication for Bishop National Bank of Hawaii (now First Hawaiian Bank).

ONE OF HIS photos shows a group of boys on a break between classes at Kamehameha Schools. William Ornellas, would grow up to be a police major and an attorney specializing in estate planning, is one of the eighth-graders in the photo.

He identified the others in the photo as Carlos Andrade (now a professor of Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa), Colin Chung, Herb De Mello, Wallace Lincoln and Norman Ota.

"We had just gotten out of the classroom, and somebody said, ‘Some guy’s taking pictures over there,’ so we just stood together and he snapped the picture," Ornellas said.

Looking at the photo brings back a flood of coming-of-age memories for Ornellas, who was a boarding student at Kamehameha.

"When you move away from your family at age 12, it gives you a different perspective because now you’ve got to make your own decisions," he said. "Some of us are closer to our classmates than to our own family members just because we lived with them for six years."

Another Adams photo, of a petroglyph filled with kiawe leaves, gave Hono­lulu resident David Forbes his brush with fame. He was a schoolboy checking out the petroglyphs at Kawaihae when Adams showed up. Forbes recognized Adams.

"I, in my schoolboy fashion, offered to sweep off the leaves, thinking he could take a better picture," he said. "He said, ‘No, don’t touch it! I like it the way it is.’ He leaned down and picked up two twigs that were lying across it, then just turned and snapped the picture. It was the most simple operation I’ve ever seen in my life.

"It was awe-making. I realize that this is a way of looking at something. It was so simple and the result were so stunning that it made a very deep impression on me," said Forbes, 72, who has written several books and last year published the award-winning book "Engraved at Lahainaluna," about engravings made at the Lahainaluna Seminary on Maui.

When he sees the picture of the petroglyph now, he says "it’s as good as it ever was."