Although Kelly was a popular painter-printmaker, he was a prolific commercial artist as well. He was most active in this field in the 1920s, doing commissions for the Hawaii Tourist Bureau as well as diverse newspaper advertisements, including illustrations, to sell land in the new subdivision of Lanikai. John Kelly's best-known work today is undoubtedly the series of menus used by the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The overly cheerful, idealized people in this luau scene, which includes well-known elements of Hawaiian culture (like the ukulele), suggest that this painting too might well have had a commercial origin.