Gottfried Lindauer’s admiration for photography helps us understand his working processes as a portrait painter. We know that he made photographs himself but few of these prints remain and it is not clear whether he ever utilised his own photography as a starting point for his portraiture.
By the time Lindauer arrived in Wellington in 1874, he had
already been working for a decade as a professional painter in
Europe. His immigration to New Zealand occurred at the same time as
a revolution within photography's technique. The difficult and
time-consuming practice of wet-plate collodion to glass plate
photography was replaced by the faster and cleaner methods of
dry-plate photography. This technique immediately made portrait
photography both cheaper to produce and easier to undertake. This
change led, during the early 1870s, to a speedy increase in the
business of New Zealand's photographic studios.
Fig. 1. James Foy
Unidentified male albumen silver photograph 1863 - 1875 Auckland
Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 1995
The developments within photography meant that studio portraits
became more accessible to the public. They were now more affordable
than they had previously been and a large market arose for
photographic images both for, and of, Māori. Māori portraits began
to circulate quickly, both locally and internationally. One of the
most popular, and cheapest, photographic formats was the carte
de visite (Fig. 1) (named after the formal visiting card) - an
object roughly the dimensions of a playing card (114 x 64mm or 4 ½
x 2 ½ inches). Locally, cartes were being produced by the
beginning of the 1860s and remained popular until about the early
1880s. Initially cartes were created using an albumen
print that was toned with sepia and then glued onto a slightly
larger piece of card. Frequently, cartes had the name and
address of the photographer printed either below the image or onto
the reverse. They were inexpensive, easily reproducible and were
able to be easily transported. Gottfried Lindauer collected a
significant number of cartes de visite by photographers
from throughout New Zealand, as well as cabinet portraits
(Fig. 2) (larger format postcard-sized cards), such as those
produced by the Foy Brothers and it was these images that assisted
him in painting portraits of Māori.
There is no scientific evidence that Gottfried Lindauer ever
applied a silver gelatin emulsion onto his canvasses. Yet, there is
ample evidence that with many of his portraits he employed an
epidiascope to project a pre-existing photographic portrait onto
his canvas.1 In the period in
which he flourished as a painter, the epidiascope was mainly used
by photographic studios and within printing establishments.
Similarly, there are few other local portrait painters in the years
1875 - 1910 who relied as comprehensively as Lindauer did on the
epidiascope as a technical support to his portrait
painting.
Erin Griffey, Senior Lecturer, Art History, University of
Auckland, has noted that in the Lindauer's 1885 portraits of
Mr and Mrs Paramena (Museum of New Zealand Te Papa
Tongarewa, 1995-0003-2, 1995-0003-3) 'Pencil marks on the face are
easily discernable with close inspection, showing he used an
epidiascope or projector to throw onto the canvas an enlarged image
which is then traced with a pencil.'2
Sarah Hillary, Principal Conservator of the Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tāmaki, has further stated that a large number of the
Lindauer portraits in the Gallery have pencil underdrawing
indicating that the paintings are based on other portraits.3 These were certainly photographic
portraits rather than drawn portraits. I believe that the
epidiascope was the key means by which Lindauer transferred
small-scaled photographic representation of his subjects onto his
canvases in the form of drawn tracings of an enlarged photograph.
Whether the portraits resulted from this process in every case is
not known but it is now certain that Lindauer based many of his
portraits, both Māori and Pākehā, on photographs that he had
gathered from photographic studios throughout New Zealand.
Professional portrait photographers had previously taken these
portraits for either the sitter or as part of their business, they
do not appear to have been commissioned by Lindauer for his own
specific use.
One of the earliest portrait photographs that he used to base a
painting on was made by Samuel Carnell (1832-1920) (Fig. 3) of the
noted Ngāti Rakaipaaka ki Kahungunu rangatira Ihaka Whaanga
(1808-1875) (Fig. 4). The actual date of this photograph is not yet
known but is certainly in the period 1865 to 1875. It dates from a
similar period to the photograph of Ihaaka that John McGarrigle of
the American Photographic Company made in his Auckland
studio.4 (Fig. 5). Of all the
photographic portraits of Ihaaka Whanga that are currently known,
the Carnell is the most compelling as it correctly records the
sitter's tā moko and his wearing of the "Old Dutch" style
beard.
The well-known oil portrait of Ana Rupene and child
(Fig. 6)5 is the most
recognised and reproduced Lindauer painting (1878). It is based on
the cabinet portrait made by the Foy Brothers at their
Thames studio sometime between 1872 and 1878 (Fig. 7). James Cowan
recounts that Ana and her child were frequently seen in Thames'
streets. Lindauer has replicated the same light direction in the
top-lit studio. In the cabinet portrait, the mother and
child look directly at the camera, a way of communicating with the
viewer that was not repeated by Lindauer, who further tilts the
woman's face away from a three-quarters pose of head and
shoulders. The tassels on the korowai have been
further tidied up in the painting making the portrait appear far
more decorative than the original.
Fig.13 Gottfried
Lindauer, Tomika Te Mutu, oil on canvas, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o
Tamaki, gift of Mr H E Partridge, 1915
The practice of studio photographers to sometimes further
emphasise the tā moko (facial tattoo) of their Māori sitters
occurred as early as the later 1860s. Such emendations - they are
never enhancements because they had a tendency to distort actual
designs - were done for an increased definition and clearer
perception of the tā moko's design in the resulting portrait. This
process did not always present an accurate portrayal of the tā moko
pattern. Such photographic enhancement of the tattoo may result
from different techniques - firstly, a photographic print may have
had the tā moko retouched by hand and then re-photographed (Fig.
8). Alternatively, the glass negative itself was retouched but this
was less frequently used as it always appeared obvious that the
design of the tā moko had been manipulated.
While some of Gottfried Lindauer's Māori portraits were painted
while the subject was alive, this was not always the case. For
instance the Ngāpuhi leader Eruera Maihi Patuone (Fig. 9) passed
away in 1872 and Lindauer's portrait dates from 1874. The portrait
was based on a powerful close-up photograph made by an unknown
photographer about 1870 (Alexander Turnbull Library, PA2-2262)
(Fig. 10). Rangi Topeora (Fig. 11), a leader of Ngāti Toa, was a
signatory to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and was
photographed at the Wellington studio of E.S. Richards sometime in
the later 1860s (Fig. 12). In Richard's carte de visite
Rangi Topeora wears three heitiki and this is
accurately recorded in the later portrait. Similarly, he carefully
copies the design of the tāniko border on her
korowai.
Fig.14 Tomika Te
Mutu, frontispiece in Robley, Major-General Moko; or Maori
tattooing London: Chapman and Hall, 1896
Original photographic portraits were not the only source of
images of the Māori that Lindauer painted. The frontispiece to
Horatio Gordon Robley's book Moko; or Maori Tattooing is a
reproduction of a photographic portrait of Tomika te Mutu (Fig. 13)
by an unknown photographer (Fig. 14). Similarly, Major Ropata
Wahawaha's portrait (Fig. 15) is based on the photograph reproduced
in Reweti Kohere's 1949 biography of the soldier yet the original
of this photograph has not yet been traced.(
http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/KohStor-fig-KohStorP006a.html)
In many instances, while it is very likely that a particular
portrait has been based on a previous photographic portrait, the
actual portrait used by Lindauer has not been traced.
The fact that many portraits of Māori are based on photographs
that were made by others in no way lessens the cultural importance
of these important oil paintings. Lindauer ensured that he created
likenesses of many people that he often did not have the
opportunity to meet personally. As ancestral images, as taonga, they are a unique moment
in the history of New Zealand's painting. Descendants of these
women and men are justifiably proud of each portrait's
creation.
Ron Brownson, Senior Curator, New Zealand and Pacific Art, Auckland
Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki