Tohunga under Tapu was the first of the large scene
paintings Lindauer completed for Partridge. It shows a tohunga
ahurewa under a state of tapu. Lindauer made an earlier and smaller
tohunga scene painting in 1898, which he titled 'The Tohunga'; it
is now known as Te Ao-katoa and is in the collection
of the Whanganui Regional Museum. It depicts Tainui Waikato tohunga
Te Aokatoa being fed cooked taewa (potato) on a stalk by a woman
who also appears in the painting Fire
Making.
Within customary Māori society the states of tapu (sacred, with
restriction) and noa (common, without restriction) were
complementary and of equal importance: one did not exist without
the other. The observance of tapu and noa was instructive in Māori
society, making tohunga important figures; they were a small, elite
group who were revered and feared and who lived apart from the
community. In Tohunga under Tapu the tohunga is
kneeling on a whāriki (woven mat) with his hands behind his back
and is being tentatively fed cooked potato by a young girl using a
bracken stalk. They are positioned in front of a small wharepuni
with a carved koruru at the gable apex. Behind them is the pā
tūwatawata: the fortification is defined by the thick palisade
posts. Beyond this a mountain range provides even greater depth and
dimension to the image.
Nigel Borell
(originally published in Gottfried Lindauer's New
Zealand: The Māori Portraits, edited by Ngahiraka Mason and
Zara Stanhope, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki and AUP,
2016.)
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