143
FIG. 13 (above):
Installation view of The
Maori Portraits: Gottfried
Lindauer’s New Zealand
at the de Young Museum
through April 1, 2018.
Photo courtesy of the Fine Arts
Museums of San Francisco.
The Maori Portraits:
Gottfried Lindauer’s
New Zealand
Through April 1, 2018
de Young Museum,
San Francisco
famsf.org
which was extinct by the late 1800s. They were
the ultimate symbol of a fi ghting warrior (fi g. 6).
White-tipped huia feathers often are depicted in
the hair, and carved adornments known as hei tiki
are worn around the neck of many sitters. The
highly valued pounamu (greenstone), of which
the latter are made, is found only in the South
Island of New Zealand and also is used for the
handheld weapons that signify the status and
power of some of the portraits’ subjects.
Lindauer’s portraiture refl ects a distinctive style
expressed throughout his career in Maori and
Pakeha portraits alike. Dignifi ed sitters—usually
seated and gazing directly at the viewer—are rendered
with vivid realism. Lindauer used glazes to
build up the surface with thin transparent paint
layers so the skin glows with life-like qualities.
Backgrounds are dark and often nondescript settings
where the sitter is surrounded by a lighter
background highlighting the
head and hinting at a halo.
The life experiences of illustrious
individuals and the
relationships between Maori
and non-Maori during a
fascinating period of colonial
exchange are revealed
through the creative legacy
of Gottfried Lindauer. The
Maori Portraits: Gottfried
Lindauer’s New Zealand celebrates
the painter’s work, it
honors the people he depicted, and it reaffi rms
the living relationships these portraits continue to
hold for descendants’ communities today.
Some information from this article was adapted from
Gottfried Lindauer’s New Zealand: The Maori Portraits, by
Ngahiraka Mason and Zara Stanhope (Auckland: Auckland
University Press in association with Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tamaki, 2016) and the Whakamiharo Lindauer Online
website: http://www.lindaueronline.co.nz/
NOTES
1. Ross Galbreath. “Buller, Walter Lawry,” Dictionary of New
Zealand Biography, fi rst published in 1990. Te Ara - the
Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/
biographies/1b46/buller-walter-lawry (accessed November
4, 2017).
2. Jock Phillips, “History of immigration - British immigration
and the New Zealand Company,” Te Ara - the
Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/
en/history-of-immigration/page-3 (accessed November 4,
2017)
was easy to reproduce and transport. Lindauer’s
best-known and admired painting is a portrait
of Heeni Hirini, a Ngati Maru woman formerly
known as Ana Rupene, with a child on her back
(fi g. 3). Lindauer painted this subject more than
thirty times over a period of twenty-four years.
His portraits of Heeni Hirini were based on a
studio photograph by the Foy Brothers, from
which they produced carte de visite and cabinetcard
photographs of her for sale and distribution
(fi g. 4). In the painting, he faithfully represented
many details, including the small wisp of hair at
the top of her head, as seen in the photograph.
This painting was awarded a gold medal by an
international jurors committee at the Louisiana
Purchase Exposition, the 1904 world’s fair held in
Saint Louis, Missouri. Other versions were exhibited
in Prague, New York, and London.
Lindauer took great care to convey the esteem
of his sitters through the
objects they hold and their
clothing and personal adornments,
though he sometimes
modifi ed the placement or
representation of these items.
His motives for making these
changes are not known. In
many of his portraits, the
practice of ta moko, or body
tattooing, is the most visible
and most important statement
of a person’s status and
authority. A tattoo in any given area of the face—
for example, from the chin to the lower cheeks, or
from the forehead to the nose—carried a particular
statement about that person.
Lindauer’s paintings feature many men and
women in customary Maori clothing and adornments
at a time when European-style clothing and
accessories were worn as daily dress by Maori
and Pakeha alike. Some sitters have kakahu
(cloaks) made of golden-colored muka (inner fl ax
fi ber) draped around their shoulders (fi gs. 8 and
10), while others are shown with prized kahu
kiwi (kiwi-feather cloaks), illustrious statements
of wealth, power, and mana that are worn only
by those of high rank and lineage (fi gs. 5 and 9).
Highly valued kahu kuri (dog-skin cloaks) were
made and worn by chiefl y men from the hide and
hair of a prized Pacifi c breed of dog, the kuri,
GOTTFRIED LINDAUER
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