PORTFOLIO
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FIG. 3 (left):
Gottfried Lindauer, Heeni
Hirini and child previously
known as Ana Rupene and
child, 1878.
Oil on canvas. 81.4 x 69 cm.
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki,
gift of Mr. H. E. Partridge, 1915,
inv. 1915/2/1.
FIG. 4 (above):
Portrait of Ana Rupene
and child by Foy Brothers,
Thames, New Zealand,
c. 1871–1878.
Albumen print carte de visite.
9 x 5.7 cm (view).
Alexander Turnbull Library,
Wellington, New Zealand,
call PAColl-9876.
er and global traveler Josef Korensky: “Say the
name Lindauer, and every Maori chief will nod
his head. ... When you attend a funeral and visit
the house of a chief, what do you see above the
displayed corpse? You will see a painting, which
is the true likeness of the chief. And who was the
creator of the work? ... You will recognize the
artist’s signature ... Lindauer.”
At the time of their creation, Lindauer’s portraits
were prominently displayed in private
homes and marae (meeting houses) and at tangihanga
(funerals), practices that continue today for
the descendants of the portrayed. Similar to fi gurative
carvings or photographs in Maori culture,
the images are seen as powerful embodiments of
ancestors containing mana (prestige and authority)
of the people depicted. Lindauer’s striking
paintings immortalize ancestors in the same way
that wood fi gures from meeting houses have for
centuries and photographs did in more recent
times. They are part of a continuum of imaging
and paying tribute to ancestors. In Maori culture
the ancestral image is revered, whether a carving,
painting, or photograph.
Lindauer revolutionized painted portraiture in
New Zealand by basing many of his representations
of Maori—both living and deceased—on
studio photographs. The developments within
photography during the 1870s made studio portraits
more affordable, and a large market developed
for photographic images of Maori as tourist
mementos. Such portraits also circulated internationally
as part of a growing market for ethnographic
photographs. The hand-sized carte de
visite was an inexpensive and popular format that
chief, adorned with chiefl y attire including two
white-tipped huia feathers, a cloak, and taiaha.
Lindauer would also paint Patuone’s younger
brother, Tamati Waka Nene, years later in 1890
(fi g. 12).
When Lindauer arrived in New Zealand, European
immigration was at its peak. The Maori
population was declining due to disease and low
fertility rates, and some observers erroneously believed
that the Maori might be dying out, either
literally or as a distinct cultural group. Espousing
this view, Partridge sought to make a lasting
record of important historical fi gures and unique
aspects of Maori life. He commissioned more than
seventy portraits and ten large-scale depictions of
Maori life and customs during his forty-threeyear
relationship with Lindauer and his family. In
1901, Partridge established the Lindauer Art Gallery
above his business and opened it to the public.
Of the hundreds of people who visited the gallery,
many recorded comments in its Maori and
English visitor’s book. Partridge donated his collection
of more than seventy Lindauer paintings
to the city of Auckland in 1915. They are now
held by the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki.
Lindauer’s friend and Napier-based photographer
Samuel Carnell (fi g. 1) introduced Lindauer
to Walter Buller, an ornithologist and lawyer for
the Native Land Court, who promoted Lindauer’s
work through personal introductions to his
network of Maori and Pakeha (European settler)
clientele and acquaintances. Like Partridge, Buller
held the view that the native plants, birds, and
people of New Zealand would inevitably be displaced
by European immigrants. The Maori, he
thought, “are dying out and nothing can save
them. Our plain duty as good, compassionate
colonists, is to smooth down their dying pillow.”1
By the end of the nineteenth century the Maori
population had dropped by forty percent since
the arrival of Europeans. As the Maori population
declined, European immigration increased
from 2,000 migrants before 1839 to a population
of 28,000 Europeans by 1852.2 However, despite
this fraught colonial context, Maori rangatira
(men and women of chiefl y esteem) also commissioned
painted portraits of themselves and their
family members. Lindauer’s early importance to
Maori portraiture is made evident by a comment
made in 1905 by the then-prominent Czech writ-