SOLID GOLDIE COLLECTORS’ PIECE

Press, 29 April 1978, Page 17

SOLID GOLDIE COLLECTORS’ PIECE

C. F. Goldie (18701947), His Life and Painting. By Alister Tavlor and Jan Glen. Alister Taylor. $2OO. (Reviewed by Brian Muir)

Without any doubt this is the most sumptuous book produced for New Zealand since Buller’s famous volume on New Zealand birds late last century. Already this massive volume, recently published in a special edition of 350 copies, has sold out and has entered the ranks of collectors’ pieces. ]t is believed to be selling second hand at about twice the cost at publication time.

The presentation of the life and work of New Zealand's most famous painter is as precise and immaculate as the artist s paintings It was, as the acknowledgement records conceived bv Alister Tavlor and compiled and edited bv himself and Jan Glen. However, a number of people have contributed to the text, and an enormous amount of research has gone into finding paintings, photographs, and documentary material to make this the most comprehensive reference work which has so far been produced on anv New Zealand artist. The editors gratefully acknowledge what they refer to as the overwhelming co-operation and generosity of members of the Goldie family, owners of Goldie paintings, art galleries, dealers, libraries and other sources of information. The list of acknowledgements is a long one and typical of the attention given to detail throughout the book. Many of the opinions expressed in the introduction by authoritative people condemn and ridicule Goldie’s work, and refer to its sterility and its stilted academic quality. He is spared nothing, yet the illustrations transcend

all that can be said about the paintings. It is true that Goldie dedicated his art to technical skill, academic cliches, photographic realism — anachronisms in the twentieth century showing little, if any, originality for composition or colour. In spite of such criticisms the fact remains that Goldie, a New Zealandborn painter, achieved popularity in his own lifetime and has retained it consistently since then. His works were popular then, as they are now because thev are the New Zealand equivalent of the Old Masters in terms of masterly skill and technique.

His portraits are full of nostalgia, both to the Maori and the pakeha. To the former, because the portrayal of relatives and ancestors was like a magical re-incarnation ever to be revered in religious-emotional terms: to the latter because, in an inverted way, many felt a sense of guilt for what their race had done to the Polynesian race, and wished to isolate and preserve forever that last nostalgic. sentimental, patronising glimpse of a great barbaric way of life that was disappearing from the face of the earth.

Forgotten were the attributes of barbarity, and ennobled and heroic were the ageing features of what seemed like brave men and women of an alien, not understood, culture facing extinction. They were, perhaps, the first truly nationalist images, created by a local boy who had made good. They served to unite our two races, perhaps more than ever the Treaty of Waitangi and endless, well-intentioned words could do. This great volume, printed with superb type on superb paper, illustrated so richly with fine-quality, large, coloured illustrations, softened

by sepia-tinted photographs of the artist, his studio, and his sitters, memorialises the emotions we attach to the painter and his people and evokes the period of nation-making which Goldie helped so much to foster.

We never quite made the grade, alas. We have settled (wisely or unwisely) for assimilation and not integration. How important it seems to many of us to clutch at anchor stones of identity, past if not present, that are so easily identifiable as Goldie’s paintings.

The man-in-the-street knows of Goldie. He knows his paintings were safe in quality (even if ridiculed by the critics in their ivory towers for being out of step with the avantgarde). Goldies are safe, both as history and as an investment. So it seems equally safe to assume that his popularity will continue and, perhaps, will increase.

Nothing has been available about Goldie before. This book’s assessment of Goldie and his work is as honest as it seems possible to be. It considers and records the good qualities of the man with the bad. He was, we are told, alcoholic for much of his life, and that he often wooed his sitters by giving them paintings. Many of them he painted many times, and sometimes copied his own paintings for willing

clients. Such anecdotes are refreshing in their humanity. Each plate is dated where possible, documented, and criticisms included where these were available. Included in the plates is the famous work “The Arrival of the Maoris in New Zealand.” on which he collaborated with his teacher Louis John Steele. The colour of this plate is, unfortunately, quite misleading, but the notes state that as the painting (which belongs to the Auckland City Art Gallery) is damaged this is the onlv colour reproduction available. There are fascinating black and white reproductions of Goldie’s cony of Gericault’s “The Raft of the Medusa” from which his work is derived as well as his preliminary sketch, which is now in the National Art Gallen' in Wellington. It is a much livelier and more satisfying work.

The major part of the volume is the catalogue in which each item is documented as fully as possible and illustrated in black and white. C. F. Goldie, His Life and Painting is a major reference work, as well as being a collector’s piece par excellence. The superb production, bound with leather and with tooled spine and encased in a solid and impressive cloth covered case, is a work of art in its own right for which the publisher is to be congratulated.