Gottfried Lindauer's (1839-1926) reputation peaked in the first decade of the twentieth century. No other New Zealand artist had achieved a definitive monument such as the Lindauer Art Gallery on Auckland's Queen Street, opened in 1901, where the Māori portraits amassed by the collector and businessman Henry Partridge (1848-1931) were displayed to the delight of Māori visitors, tourists and locals alike. How had Lindauer succeeded in gaining such status as the premier painter of Māori?
"Herr G. Lindauer, the clever little Bohemian artist whose
lifework has been the painting of Māori portraits and scenes of
Māori life, is still painting away in his quiet studio at
Woodville. He must have turned out a couple of hundred pictures
during his life in New Zealand. He has had two patrons in
particular, Mr. H. E. Partridge, of Auckland, and the late Sir
Walter Buller. Mr. Partridge has kept the artist busy for twenty or
thirty years past, painting one portrait after another of Māori
notabilities, the tattooed man-eaters and warriors, and so forth,
and the fine rangatira women of the past. The Partridge Gallery of
Māori portraits is a wonderful collection, and yet is little
known." 1
Portraiture had long been the most profitable of artistic
genres, and this was especially the case in a distant colony where
European-trained artists were few and far between. Initially
occupied with commissions from Pākehā (European) settlers,
including leading churchmen, local politicians and the mercantile
elite, Lindauer also explored the possibilities of Māori
portraiture. This led to a lucrative income from commissions that
flowed from the Māori world, where in the later nineteenth century
life-sized oil portraits enjoyed a particular prestige. Indeed, it
is the bicultural nature of this patronage - and the working
practices that achieved it - that set Lindauer apart from other
painters of the period who depicted Māori subjects.
Fig. 1 Gottfried Lindauer, Huria Matenga, 1909, oil on
canvas, Suter Art Gallery Te Aratoi o Whakatū
Lindauer's supremacy in the genre is underlined by a commission
he received in 1909. The citizens of Nelson - one of the earliest
settlements of the colonising New Zealand Company subscribed
funds for a portrait memorialising the Ngati Tama chieftainess
Huria Matenga (1840/42-1909, Fig.1), a famous
Māori citizen who had recently died. On 3 September 1863, when the
brigantine Delaware was wrecked on rocks at Wakapuaka near Nelson,
it was the local Māori community who came to the rescue. Huia
Matenga, with her husband Hemi Matenga and Hohapata Kahupuku, swam
through thunderous seas and succeeded in securing the rope from the
ship to shore that saved the lives of all but one of those on
board. At the time, her achievement was honoured with a public
dinner and the presentation of a gold watch and chain.2 Four and a half decades on, Huia's
heroism was posthumously declared in the form of a grand oil
painting based on a studio photograph destined for the new Nelson's
Bishop Suter Art Gallery. The presentation ceremony on 8 March 1910
included Māori representatives who, through an interpreter,
informed the Governor General how they appreciated the honour and
respect they felt had been paid to the Māori people by this
gesture.3 While other civic
bodies around New Zealand occasionally commissioned an oil portrait
of a mayor or local founding father, this initiative by Nelson was
extraordinary for its time.
Nevertheless, there were critics who argued that Lindauer - by
now in his sixties - already belonged to history. Commenting on a
recent addition to Partridge's gallery, the Observer noted
in 1903 that "Herr G. Lindauer is a name better known to the last
generation, perhaps, than it is to the present".4 The writer observed how the previous
exhibition of the Auckland Society of Arts showed that "[p]ictures
of Maori life have been fashionable of late". The definitive star
of that exhibition was Charles F. Goldie (1870-1947), whose two
large paintings of elderly Māori women in melancholic poses were
selected for presentation to the departing wife of a
Governor.5 Aged in his early
thirties and wielding an impressive hyperrealist technique honed
over several years at the Academie Julian in Paris, Goldie
exemplified a new breed of locally born New Zealand artists who
looked overseas for their training. Goldie's elderly Māori subjects
included a number who had been depicted by Lindauer, but the
younger artist took his work beyond straightforward portraiture. On
top of the superlative technique, Goldie injected a sentimental
narrative quality that marks his work as a form of colonial
orientalism. Still, the nature of his specialism in Māori
depictions meant that - to Goldie's continued annoyance - his name
would forever be coupled with that of Lindauer. Another link
between the artists was the increasing critical neglect they faced
in the course of the twentieth century, as Pākehā art history
struggled to evaluate the heritage of Māori portraiture.
A Portrait Painter in New Zealand
Whereas Goldie debuted in the turn of the century art society
exhibitions and soon saw his work represented in New Zealand's
nascent art galleries, Lindauer launched his colonial career in
less auspicious times. With a fixed studio practice along
traditional lines scarcely feasible in a thinly populated colony,
Lindauer embarked on the itinerant practice that would reap a
regular crop of portrait commissions. These were achieved through
newspaper advertisements and by exhibiting recently completed work
in shop windows - a prime mode of placing work before the public,
but also of securing critical notice. After a year in Nelson he
shifted to Auckland in late 1875, where he showed three portraits
in the window of Isidore Alexander's jewellery shop ahead of their
inclusion in the forthcoming exhibition of the Auckland Society of
Artists.6 Eye-catching
exhibitions of recently completed portraits were staged throughout
1876 in the show-window of Phillipps's paint and paperhanging shop
on Queen Street.
These early portraits, almost exclusively depictions of Pākehā
notables, were received with huge enthusiasm. "The likeness is a
capital one", noted the Herald of William Motion's
portrait, "and is brought out with almost the fidelity and detail
of a photograph; the figure stands out on the canvas with startling
life-like reality, and the artist's genius with 'tints', and
'lights' and shadows' has fully brought out the 'poetry of
motion'." 7
A poignant side of the practice was Lindauer's facility for
posthumous portraiture, including that of the four-year-old Isa
Watson whose portrait - taken from a photograph - was shown at
Phillipps's in October 1876.8
The sole Māori portrait shown was his 1874 depiction of Huia
Matenga, the "Grace Darling of New Zealand", made in Nelson soon
after his arrival and indicative of an early awareness of Māori
celebrity as a marketable category of work.9 Accorded a rapturous reception, this
portrait was subsequently acquired by Henry Partridge for his
incipient collection of Māori celebrities.
Lindauer next shifted to Wellington, which as the seat of
central government promised rich pickings for a portrait painter.
It was in Wellington in 1877 that the democratic nature of the
shopwindow exhibition was emphatically revealed by the magnetic
attraction that Lindauer's portraits exerted on Māori viewers, and
where his Māori portrait practice began in earnest. The artist's
recollections of the situation that unfolded on the principal
thoroughfare of Lambton Quay, when visiting Māori were electrified
by the exhibited portraits, surface in an obituary written by his
son, Victor W. Lindauer (1888-1964): "Such crowds of Maoris
persisted in dancing haka in front of the shop in their excitement,
and thus obstructing the road, that the police sergeant declared in
jest that Mr Lindauer would be held responsible for the salaries of
extra policemen on duty there."10
A celebrated libel case in the Supreme Court, impinging on the
sale of Māori land, had brought Te Hapuku (?-1878) and other
leading Hawke's Bay chiefs to Wellington. In another brief
reminiscence of his father's career, Victor Lindauer claimed that
Te Hapuku commissioned three versions of his portrait, and that the
artist "painted Hapuku later again for Partridge".11 The Partridge Collection portrait
is clearly dated 1877 and hence is revealing on two counts.
Firstly, we see how Lindauer's portrait formula was firmly
established in these early years. Set within an indeterminate
darkness and illuminated from above, the venerable Te Hapuku
directly confronts both artist and viewer of the portrait, a mode
deployed in many later Māori commissions. Secondly, replication of
the portraits of celebrated individuals - with strategic retention
of either the 'original' or a replica - had become part of his
business practice.
Fig. 2 Gottfried Lindauer, Paora Tuhaere, 1878, oil on
canvas, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of Mrs Emma Sloane,
1934
During Lindauer's residence in the goldfields town of Thames in
the summer of 1878, an exhibition in the window of Foy Brothers'
(James Joseph and Joseph Michael Foy, 1844-1890 and 1847-1923)
photographic studio included two of his Wellington portraits, Wi
Tako Ngatata and Te Hapuku, the historic nature of the latter
depiction underscored by recent news of the chief's death. He
showed these with another made earlier that same year, depicting
the leading Auckland chief, Paora Tuhaere (?-1892, Fig.
2), in formal European attire. The Thames Star
had already informed its readers that Lindauer was "bringing a
rather lengthened tour of the Colonies to a close" in order to take
his Māori portrait collection back to his homeland of Austria,
while a further notice indicated that the exhibition "attracted
much attention, especially that of the Maoris".12 Persistent threats to abandon the
colony were undoubtedly calculated to solicit further portraits,
but there is also a sense of Lindauer's growing awareness that his
unique Māori portrait collection represented a commodity of
particular value.
Lindauer's restless peregrination encompassed a spell in
Christchurch, where in October 1879 "three life-like portraits of
Maori men and women", displayed at the Philosophical Institute on
the occasion of Rev. J. W. Stack's lecture on "The Maori", received
admiration "as works of art".13 By December of that year he was
back in Wellington, showing Māori portraits in the window of Thomas
Myers' picture-framing shop on Lambton Quay that included the first
appearance of "a Hauraki chieftainess, Hanne Rupena, with her
infant daughter".14 Based on
a Foy Brothers photograph, this winsome mother and child portrait
would become the most replicated of all Lindauer's works, securing
prizes and seducing raffle ticket purchasers in various parts of
the country.15 In a further
show at Myers, "the Maori woman and the chubby little
'pickanniny'[sic]" appeared alongside portraits of Wi Tako and
"another of a young Maori belle, apparently not very long
'out"'.'16 Courtesy of Myers,
the works appeared in "handsome and massive frames - of a kind
which it has hitherto been found necessary to import from
Melbourne", which suggests that the frames were intended to enhance
their commodity value.
Lindauer moved to Hawke's Bay in 1880 at the invitation of Peti
Karaitiana, who commissioned eight paintings.17 These included one of her late
husband, Karaitiana Takamoana (?-1879), who had served in the House
of Representatives as a delegate for Eastern Māori, one of the four
'Native' electorates. Beginning in Wellington in 1877, Lindauer
recorded his Māori portrait commissions in numbered sequences in a
small notebook.18 In Hawke's
Bay he reached number 46, against a combined revenue standing at
£934 - an average of £20 per portrait. It was Napier's leading
photographer, Samuel Carnell (1832-1920), who introduced Lindauer
to the lawyer and collector, Walter Buller (1838-1906), whose
professional milieu was the Native Land Court. We can thank
Buller's desire to patronise the artist for Lindauer's decision to
remain in New Zealand, as Victor's reminiscences record that around
1882 Carnell discovered that Lindauer had sold his possessions and
was preparing to return to Europe. Instead, Carnell persuaded him
to join Buller and seek commissions from Māori claimants in the
Native Land Court. This was the point at which Lindauer's career as
a painter of Māori portraits finally became viable, and when
Buller's and Partridge's collections of Lindauer's work grew in
tandem with a flood of commissions from Māori.
Walter Buller and Gottfried Lindauer
The 1882/83 sittings of the Native Land Court in the frontier
town of Cambridge brought together an enormous throng of claimants
to the Waikato tribal lands that, until recently, had remained
largely inaccessible to Europeans. Deploying his traditional
technique of street-front display, Lindauer's exhibition of the Wi
Tako portrait in the window of Hughes's chemist shop had immediate
impact: "The natives assembled en masse in front of the shop to
offer their greeting and to sing a waiata [song] composed years ago
in honour of this chief. The portrait of Wi Tako is so realistic
that when first exhibited here old Hakariwhi, of the Ngatihaua,
could not resist the temptation to rub noses with the picture,
giving expression at the same time to the usual mihi
[greeting]".19
Lindauer's temporary studio also showed a portrait of Renata
Kawepo (?-1888), a leading Hawke's Bay chief, and his young wife,
Puketapu. The display of portraits of great chiefs such as Wi Tako
and Kawepo was undoubtedly designed to tempt Waikato chiefs into
similar commissions. Three months later, Lindauer provoked a
temporary depletion of attendance at the Land Court with his
'counter-attraction' of a portrait of the Māori king Tawhiao
(?-1894) in full costume, painted to the order of Buller, alongside
another of the celebrated tohunga, Te Aokatoa, to the order of a
certain Major Jackson.20 The
aged Te Aokatoa was a particularly feared tohunga, or Māori priest,
and had officiated at the ceremonies of the Hauhau cult that arose
during the colonial wars of the 1860s. Interestingly enough, it was
Māori desire that ensured his depiction: "The venerable man is
blind from sheer old age, and his tribe were so anxious to preserve
his likeness that they brought him down from Aotearoa expressly for
that purpose".21 This
commentator measured Lindauer's success by the "unbounded delight
[given] to the natives from all parts of the district", while he
mused on the undoubted value of a permanent collection of such
works: "The Maoris of the old type are passing away, and nothing
could possess more interest for future generations than a gallery
of such pictures as these. In a very few years it will be
impossible to obtain them. None of the local museums being in a
position to incur the cost of a proper series of such portraits,
the Government ought, in the interests of the colony, to take
advantage of this opportunity of securing so valuable a collection
of historical paintings".22
Buller's importance in facilitating such a collection cannot be
overestimated. Benefiting from lucrative retainers and extravagant
daily fees, he was the leading lawyer and effective grandee of the
hearings.23 When King Tawhiao
visited the town on 16 May 1883, attended by 150 horsemen, the
court adjourned for the day in order that Tawhiao could be hosted
by Buller at Kirkwood's Hotel; Tawhiao's followers meanwhile
received gifts of food and were billeted with Ngati Raukawa.24 Soon afterwards, Lindauer was
working on life-size portraits of Tawhiao's favourite wife,
Ngahuia, and of his close associates, Manuhiri and Wahanui.25
That Buller enriched himself at the expense of Maori land
claimants was evident to the claimants themselves, including Hitiri
Te Paerata (?-1909), who in February 1883 denounced Buller for
dragging out the cases in order to enhance his fees.26 Nevertheless, by deciding to
commission a portrait from Lindauer, Te Paerata ensured that his
portrait would enter Buller's collection. A celebrated hero of the
defence of Orakau in the Waikato war two decades earlier, Te
Paerata donned the Māori attire that accorded perfectly with
Buller's desire for ethnographic authenticity. Another
uncompromisingly frontal depiction of Te Paerata was created two
years later by Joseph Gaut (1860-1934), a mysterious itinerant
painter who also sought Māori patronage in this period.
Victor Lindauer's reminiscences record that Buller exacted a
half-length portrait worth £30 in exchange for every £200 worth of
commissions that he helped to secure for the artist.27 Not only does this explain the
frequent appearance of Buller's name in Lindauer's notebook, listed
alongside the subjects' names and the prices they were paying, but
it further suggests that Buller accumulated his portrait collection
completely free of charge. That the system was susceptible to abuse
is revealed by a letter dated 2 November 1885, sent to Buller by
Anihera Reina, who disputes the £20 she is being asked to pay for a
portrait that does not resemble her. "This portrait is not at all
like me, because you did not invite me to come to the place where
the portrait was begun, so that you two could know what I looked
like".28 Anihera's letter
suggests that Lindauer's prowess in working from photographs had
its limits.
The significant rewards accruing from engagement in this field
are revealed by the page in Lindauer's notebook that computes the
impressive amount he received for his Māori portrait production - a
grand total of £4,474, inclusive of £1,421 contributed by Henry
Partridge. This income not only provided the means for Lindauer and
his wife Rebecca (1849-1944) to visit London at the time of the
Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886, where Buller's collection
of portraits formed an eye-catching central display of the New
Zealand Court, it also allowed them to settle in the peaceful North
Wairarapa junction town of Woodville.
The Ethnographic Artist - Abroad and at
Home
As early as 1876, during Lindauer's first sojourn in Auckland,
it was suggested that he depict a leading Tauranga chief, Hori
Tupaea (?-1881), in a portrait to be transmitted to the upcoming
Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition.29 Though the portrait was not
realised, this is an early recognition of Lindauer's status as the
producer of ethnographic art - a genre that, alongside ethnological
collections of artefacts, was achieving recognition at
international exhibitions. Buller's formation of a Māori portrait
collection was closely connected to his accumulation of an immense
artefact collection, which in turn was facilitated by his close
relationships with Māori clients. As he later explained to a London
journalist, "I have many personal friends among the leading chiefs
whose language, of course, I speak fluently. I am also the
possessor of no fewer than seven of their greenstone meres [hand
weapons] -the badge of chieftainship - given me by representative
chiefs on different state occasions."30 That the "state occasions" in
question comprised real estate transactions, with Buller taking
profitable retainers and daily fees from more than one party, was
neither here nor there. Like the portraits, many of his chiefly
'curios' must have arrived as additional perks in a business that,
in 1882, Buller estimated was earning a staggering six to eight
thousand pounds per year.31
Fig. 3 Gottfried Lindauer, Terewai Horomona, the Maori
Poi Dancer, 1886, oil on canvas, The Royal Collection, London
Buller's collection provided the mainstay of the Māori Court in
the Colonial and lndian Exhibition, a succession of cases of carved
greenstones and woven fabrics presided over by a gallery of
portraits. Some portraits presented Māori 'celebrities' - Tawhiao,
the Māori King/Wahanui, the Māori Orator/Hitiri Paerata, the Hero
of Orakau - attired in native costume and carrying traditional
weapons. Others showed "handsome native girls and half-breeds",
said by The Times "to have always a little crowd of
admirers".32 It was one from
the latter category, a portrait of the alluring Terewai
Horomona (Fig. 3) as a poi dancer, that helped to secure
what Buller craved more than anything - a knighthood.33 Buller was fond of retelling the
story of when the Prince of Wales visited the New Zealand Court:
"The Prince glanced politely, but wearily, at the kauri gum and
wool and flax and other exhibits, and was apparently about to go
when he caught sight of a picture on the wall - Lindauer's painting
of a pretty Hawke's Bay Māori girl, with a wreath of clematis
thrown carelessly over her head. The Prince asked for a chair, and
he sat there looking at the picture for several minutes. At last,
as he rose to go, he said to Sir Somers Vine and Dr Buller: 'Do you
know, that is one of the most beautiful pictures I have ever
seen!"'34
Buller hastily dispatched the painting to the palace, asking the
prince to accept it as a "memento of his visit", and the gesture in
turn returned a dividend in the form of his KCMG (Knight Commander
of the Order of St. Michael and St. George).35 The exhibition in London certainly
helped to seal Lindauer's fame back in New Zealand, but news of
Buller's metropolitan apotheosis was less warmly received. One
commentator refused even to recognise the first colonialborn
knight, referring scornfully to "Dr Buller, who has grown rich on
the spoils of poor simple Maoris, and now wears these after the
manner of an American Indian chief, who decorated him-self with the
scalps of his victims".36
Lindauer's most important exhibition by far was the monumental
installation of the Lindauer Art Gallery opened by his principal
collector, Henry Partridge, in May 1901. From Māori citizens, in
particular, the response was immediate: "The crowds of Maori
visitors there never require any key or catalogue, thus proving the
excellence of the portraits - and it is noticeable that they take
little or no interest in the pictures of chiefs other than those of
their own particular tribe; but these, once spotted, come in for
rounds of applause, delivered in Maori fashion, thus: 'By golly!'
ad lib., they say, and then rush into the street to bring in
friends or relations that may be anywhere near."37
Partridge maintained two visitors' books in the gallery, one
with the title Pukapuka Mo Nga Manuhiri Tangata Matakitiki (book of
the viewing visitors). The very existence of the Māori Visitors'
Book, in which the Māori-language letterpress invites viewers to
contribute, is evidence that Māori access to the collection was
central to the planning of the Lindauer Art Gallery.38 It was the Lindauer Art Gallery
which also encouraged the bilingual journalist James Cowan
(1870-1943) to become the leading historical biographer of
Māoridom. Perhaps inspired by a fulsome appraisal of Partridge's
new gallery that appeared in the Auckland Star in
September 1901, Partridge commissioned Cowan to compile the text
for a biographical guide to the 40 portraits that, with the large
historical canvas of Tohunga under Tapu, then formed
the collection.39 Cowan
adapted texts already collected by Partridge from James Mackay
(1831-1912) and others, while also conducting his own interviews
with "[t]he chiefs themselves, sons, daughters, and
relatives".40 The modest
68-page booklet of 1901 was revisited in 1930 as a fully
illustrated, 220-page biographical catalogue of the Partridge
Collection.41 Pictures of
Old New Zealand deserves recognition as the first New Zealand
art monograph, an honour usually accorded to Eric Hall McCormick
(1906-1995) for his introduction to a 1956 book on the work of Eric
Lee-Johnson (1908-1993).42
From a quarter-century earlier, Cowan's book documents all 70
Lindauer works in the Partridge Collection, providing information
on the depicted individuals, though relatively little on the
circumstances of production. Perhaps the most remarkable feature is
the appendix of translated excerpts from the Lindauer Art Gallery's
visitors' books, which makes Cowan's book the first monograph on a
New Zealand artist to take account of the bicultural reception of
his work.
Lindauer's Status as an Artist
The aesthetic status of Lindauer's paintings was never entirely
secure, for the 'photographic' qualities that delighted many early
commentators would quickly become a liability and an all too
evident pointer to their origins. Writing in 1890 to Captain
Gilbert Mair (1843-1923), lender of important Māori works to the
New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition staged at Dunedin over the
summer of 1889/90, Thomas Hocken (1836-1910) referred to the
arrival of Lindauer's enormous painting, The Maori at Home (1885).
Owned by Mair's brother-in-law, Walter Buller, the work had
provided a centrepiece at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition:
"Buller's picture has long ago been safely erected and, as he
requested, an insurance of £600 put on it. Opinions differ - I
would not give him £30 for it. To my mind it is uninteresting, most
typical, and like all Lindauer's pictures, deadly flat."43
Another leading New Zealand bibliophile and artefact collector
of the period, who spurned Lindauer's work, was Alexander Turnbull
(1868-1918).44 In 1918, this
proud possessor of Māori portraits by a range of colonial artists
informed a London dealer: "I do not care to purchase any of this
artist's work. They are really coloured photographs, and of little,
if any, artistic value."45
Despite the achievement of Partridge's portrait gallery on
Auckland's Queen Street, Lindauer's declining artistic status is
suggested by a 1908 competition in the Weekly Graphic and
New Zealand Mail to name "the six best New Zealand
artists, living or dead, including not only those who are natives
of the country, but also those of any nationality who have resided
in the Dominion and produced New Zealand pictures in Oil or Water
Colours".46 Hands-down winner
was Charles Goldie, nominated by 90 per cent of the voters,
followed by several leading landscape painters, with Lindauer
languishing in eighth place and cited by fewer than 25 per cent of
the voters.47 Lindauer's only
consolation was that Louis John Steele (1842-1918), the "Meissonier
of Maoriland", trailed behind him at eleventh place.
Lindauer's twentieth-century reception can be tracked through
the fortunes of the Partridge Collection which, triumphantly
acquired for the Auckland Art Gallery in 1915, suffered a gradual
and seemingly inexorable decline in prestige, as an expanding
collection of European and local paintings placed pressure on the
gallery's display spaces. By the 1930s, the Lindauer display was
relegated to an upstairs gallery adjacent to the Old Colonists
Museum, where the pioneering Māori film actress Ramai Hayward
(1916-2014) recalled regular groups of Māori visitors attending a
space that still functioned as a type of ancestral shrine.48 For many Pākehā art-lovers,
however, the Lindauer collection represented an embarrassing relic
of a colonial heritage that some thought should realise its
"ethnological value" through a transfer to the Auckland
Museum.49 While debates
concerning the status and appropriate housing of the Partridge
Collection dragged on into the 1960s, the nadir of Lindauer's
reputation can be dated at 1956, when the recently arrived Auckland
Art Gallery director Peter Tomory infuriated many local admirers of
Lindauer and Goldie by pronouncing: "Lindauer was no Gauguin. His
work is of social and historical importance but it is not great
art. [...] Goldie, on the other hand, is a second-rate
Lindauer."50
A sample of Lindauer's portraits was usually to be found among
the New Zealand art on display, but evidence of a significant
reevaluation of the Partridge Collection came when it was
displayed in its entirety alongside Te Maori: Te Hokinga
Mai at the Auckland Art Gallery in 1987.51 All 62 portraits of the collection
lined the walls of the gallery that was used by tribal groups to
welcome visitors to the exhibition - the first time for decades
that the entire collection had been displayed within a single
space. Despite expressing a conviction that Lindauer's work had
"tenuous connections with high art", art historian Michael Dunn was
impressed by the exhibition: "It was interesting to note how well
they functioned, by contrast, when hung in the paepae room of the
Te Maori exhibition at the Auckland City Art Gallery in
1986 [sic]. There, in the context of Maori ceremony, they took on a
deeper meaning which stirred some life from their severe, formal
demeanour."52
The entire collection returned to view in 1997 in conjunction
with the retrospective Goldie, when the gallery again hosted tribal
delegations with speakers addressing the pictures, just as their
ancestors had at the Lindauer Art Gallery earlier in the century.
Also contributing to a growing awareness of the special status
signalled by the bicultural origins of Lindauer's work was the
Whanganui Regional Museum's inauguration in 1993 of a gallery
showcasing the Buller Collection, alongside a number of beautifully
preserved portraits on loan from local Māori collections works
that Buller had helped to bring into existence.
It is the shared nature of the Māori oil portrait tradition that
offers a truly distinctive feature of New Zealand art history, with
few parallels to be found in other British settler
societies.53 In Australia,
Aborigines have been almost completely excluded from the category
of heroic portraiture, and there is little or no evidence of
indigenous engagement with portraits.54 The North American 'Indian
Galleries' formed by the painters Charles Bird King and George
Catlin earlier in the nineteenth century, enacting in paint the
'preservation' of a doomed people, offer certain parallels with
Partridge's Lindauer Gallery - a colonising culture, appropriating
the lands of another people, memorialises the picturesque and noble
appearance of the vanquished chiefs.55 But again, what seems to be
missing in the American context is any significant patronage on the
part of the indigenous world, or continuing engagement with the
genre, to match the widespread Māori co-option of colonial-era
portraiture in New Zealand that is evidenced in the work of
Gottfried Lindauer.
Roger Blackley, Victoria University of Wellington Te Whare
Wānanga o te Upoko o te Ika a Māui
First published in Gottfried Lindauer: die Maori-portraits
for the Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in
collaboration with Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki; edited by Udo
Kittelmann und Britta Schmitz. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther
König, 2014. Reprinted online with the kind permission of the
author and publishers.