Tastefully bound in shiny green leather, the two imposing ledgers sat side by side on a table in the gallery that opened in Queen Street in 1901.
Fig. 1 Richardson,
James D; Burton Brothers Looking north along Queen St … 1880
Reproduced with the permission of the Auckland City Libraries
Embossed on one is the title 'PUKAPUKA MO NGA MANUHIRI TANGATA
MATAKIT[A]KI', today informally known as the 'Māori Visitors' Book'. The
other carries the title 'VISITORS BOOK LINDAUER ART GALLERY' (Fig.
1) and is referred to as the 'Pākehā Visitors' Book'. In fact,
there were Māori visitors who inscribed their names on the very
first page of the Pākehā Visitors' Book and, when the Pākehā book
was filled completely in 1908, everyone then inscribed the Māori
Book. These hundreds of texts, contributed by Māori and Pākehā
visitors, foreign tourists and sundry graffitists, document the
bicultural context of what amounted to an extraordinary national
portrait gallery of Māori celebrities.
On the very first page of the Māori Book appears the shaky
signature of Ruka Aratapu (Fig.2), the fifth
recorded visitor to the gallery and the subject of a portrait on
display, who came with a group from Poverty Bay on 3 June 1901.
Most of the Māori visitors belonged to the succeeding generations:
the sons and daughters, nieces and nephews. Sometimes
characterising themselves as the 'morehu', or
remnant, they saluted their now-departed elders who were arrayed
before them in the gallery. And following the messages of greeting
and farewell came fulsome accolades to the 'tohunga',
Gottfried Lindauer, and to the generous patron and curator, Henry
Partridge, whose initiative in forming the gallery was commended by
so many of the Māori visitors.
This rich documentation of Māori engagement with the collection
reveals a distinctive reception of ancestral depictions that, while
distinct from European notions of art and ethnography, inevitably
co-existed with these categories. While portrait paintings had long
served important roles within the Māori world, displayed within
meeting houses and deployed at tangihanga, such collections
emphasised the genealogical connections between portrayed
individuals. By contrast, the collection of Lindauer portraits
formed by Partridge - encompassing a multiplicity of tribes, both
'rebels' and 'friendlies' - was quite distinct from those extant
within the Māori world. This is the point made by Tupotahi
Tukorehu of Kihikihi (no. 147): 'The caretaker of these
paintings was right to display them at the same place'.
By the 1890s, Partridge's fast-growing collection had achieved
considerable fame in both the Māori and Pākehā worlds. Descendants
and relatives were regularly welcomed at the Partridge residence in
Grafton Road (Fig.3), and it is likely that the facilitation of
such visits was a significant motive behind the 1901 opening of the
Lindauer Art Gallery. The very existence of the Māori 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. This need not have excluded
other motives, such as the provision of secure housing for a
uniquely valuable collection of national significance.
Certainly, many of the visitors thought that Partridge's
initiative was one made on behalf of Māori. Rameka Poi
of Waiapu (no. 124) considered it 'a noble gesture', while Te Kei
Paehua of Ngāti Raukawa (no. 145) paid homage 'to the Pākehā
who fashioned you in this way to be admired by your future
descendants'. Hone Mima Tiuakauamate of Ngāti Porou
(no. 157) wrote that 'to my knowledge it is an act of kindness to
us from the Pākehā, to take care of things like this so that we
will remember our loved ones who have departed from us'.
Mita K.
Ngatipare of Raglan visited the gallery on at least three
occasions, when he inscribed fulsome messages in the book (nos 125, 154 and 164).
Ngatipare shows his awareness that Partridge had created something
distinctively new in bringing together individuals of disparate
tribes but, together with many Māori visitors, he invokes the
gallery as a profoundly Māori space: 'Farewell to you, the noble
people of New Zealand, in your house that is remembered as
Aotearoa'.
Over and over, the Māori visitors wrote of the 'whakamiharo' -
surprise or amazement - provoked by the life-like quality of the
portraits, and of how they could sense the spiritual presence of
the depicted ancestors. The Rev. Hone Peri Paerata of Ngāti
Tuwharetoa (no. 108) writes of Te Heuheu Tukino's 'amazement in
relation to the spiritual chiefs [rangatira wairua] present in
physical form in this house'. According to Rere Te Kowha
of Ngā Puhi (no, 146), 'they are happy living here in the presence
of my Pākehā friend, who has done a great job'.
Fig. 4 Apirana
Turupa Ngata, ca 1905, b&w copy negative, 35mm-00094-D-F,
Timeframes
In an evocative phrase, Apirana Ngata (Fig.4) (no. 84) referred
to Lindauer's paintings as 'shadow carvings of the European artist'
(te ata whakairo a te tohunga Pakeha), thereby incorporating them
within a Māori aesthetic. In 1903, a mother and daughter (nos 189 and 190)
wrote 'we the Māori do not know how to make these images of our
ancestors, so greetings to you'. Five years later, on 12 June 1908,
Kuini Wi
Rangipupu of Ngāti Ruanui and Rangitopeora of Te Atiawa expressed
their 'great admiration for the Pākehā expert', but also expressed
the hope that Māori might take up portrait painting for themselves:
'We sincerely hope the day will come when Māori will acquire this
skill as it seems very much akin to the carving work of the
Māori'.
It is impossible to quantify the early Māori visitation to the
Partridge collection with any precision, in part due to the
likelihood that not all visitors inscribed the book. Individual
entries were given consecutive numbers until mid-1907, when the
Māori book took on a more chaotic aspect following the completion
of the Pākehā book with its 7039 numbered visitors over a six-year
period. Nevertheless, of the 332 numbered entries made in the Māori
book over this same period, the vast majority were made by Māori
visitors.
Fig. 5 Cover of
the [Pākehā] Visitors' Book
While not yet digitally accessible, the Pākehā book (Fig. 5) is
also a crucial source for the reception of the Lindauer Art
Gallery. One of the earliest visitors, William Simpson of Sydney,
wrote on 31 May 1901 that it was 'more interesting than the public
Art Gallery; it is to be hoped that this will never be lost to the
public of New Zealand', while an Auckland visitor on 2 July 1901
felt 'bound to say that they are the best I have seen outside the
National Gallery, London'. A more measured judgment came from J. A.
Baker of London, the special artist and correspondent accompanying
the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York in 1901 (Fig.6): 'Fine
example of disinterested work in interest of education, than which
no subject is more important. Kia ora, Mr. Partridge. When New
Zealand wakes to a proper interest in its traditions, it will owe
you much.' Another informed foreign visitor was Allen Hutchinson, a
British-born sculptor who produced a bust of Lindauer for
Partridge's gallery (Fig.7). Hutchinson characteristically stressed
the ethnological importance of the collection: 'The value of Mr
Lindauer's work can hardly be estimated by this generation. The
time when such types can be procured is rapidly passing. It will be
the generations to come who will understand the full value of such
a collection.'
Fig. 9 Te Māori Te
Hokinga Mai The Return Home at the Auckland City Art Gallery,
1987
James Cowan (Fig. 8)1
published a selection of visitors' comments in an appendix to his
Pictures of Early New Zealand, the 1930 book that
documented the entire Partridge Collection. While these excerpts
have been known to New Zealand art historians, until recently the
ledgers themselves remained hidden in a basement storeroom of the
Auckland Art Gallery. As it turns out, they are much more than a
roll-call of famous names, recording their visits to Auckland's
latest attraction. Instead, they reveal an astonishing intensity
and intimacy of engagement on the part of a wide range of relatives
and descendants, who speak to and sometimes hear from the
portraits, and provide compelling evidence of the spiritual
presence that Māori visitors sensed in the collection. This same
presence was felt by successive generations, who continued to pay
such visits after the collection became available at the Auckland
Art Gallery in 1915. Perhaps the greatest occasion in their
subsequent history was when the great-great-grandchildren assembled
before the entire collection of portraits in 1987, at the opening
of Te Māori: Te Hokinga Mai (Fig. 9) at the Auckland City
Art Gallery.
Roger Blackley, Victoria University of Wellington Te Whare
Wānanga o te Upoko o te Ika a Māui