THE MAORI AS OTHERS SAW HIM

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 154, 26 March 1938, Page 15

THE MAORI AS OTHERS SAW HIM

Work Of Early Artists EXTRAORDINARY CONCEPT OF THE NATIVE FACE New Zealanders of to-day have long since grown accustomed to the peculiar physiognomy of the Maori; but to the settlers of a century ago, accustomed to the European cast of countenance, that of the • Polynesian must have seemed strange. At any rate, few of the early European artists were able to portray accurately the features of the Maori, and how far from reality were some of their attempts may be gauged by a visit to the exhibition of early paintings at present being held at the Turnbull Library. Many early visitors to New Zealand were, in some degree, artistically endowed. They were fascinated by the colourful scenes of Maori life that invited interpretation through pencil and ■canvas; but when it came to the execution some very curious Maoris emerged. As it is unlikely that the Maori type has changed radically during the last century, it must have been the artists who were at fault. In the Turnbull exhibition, works of nearly all the ' important early artists are 1 included— George French Angas, Augustus Earle, Captain Oliver arffl Charles Heaphy. Some very peculiar results are achieved. One artist makes the Maori too European-looking; the. French plates accompanying Dumont D’Urville’s Voyages turn him into a Frenchman, while George French Angas has painted a Maori whose features stress unduly the small element of the Mongolian or Chinese type found among the Maoris. Of course some of these artists, notably George Baxter, who made the artistic colour print of the landing of the Rev. Mr. Waterhouse on the beach at Taranaki, had never seen a Maori in their lives and drew him from imagination, or from other prints. Baxter was never in the Pacific, but he made quite a number of prints illus : trating the activities of the London Missionary Society. When this is taken into consideration his Maoris are by no means as unconvincing as some. Another absent/e artist must surely have been the Frenchman, Grasset, who decorated an old book of 1794 with pictures of the strange natives of New Zealand in front of little stone “whares” shaped exactly like igloos., On all three visits of Captain Cook to New Zealand an artist was on board. On the first voyage it was Parkinson, whose fine plate of a bearded and aquiline looking Maori is included in this exhibition. On the second voyage it was W. Hodges. His “Family in Dusky Sound” bears a strong resemblance to a conventional eighteenth century family group. There is another queer print of a family in “Dusky Bay,” where the man has the mien of an ancient Greek, the women the voluptuousness of courtesans.

D’Urville’s Maori is even more curious. He manages to combine something of the appearance of a Frenchman, with a depraved and hang-dog primitiveness. , Not all the Maori portraits displayed are remarkable for their badness. There are two very fine and vigorous pencil portraits by an unknown artist who signs himself “ILL.” One is of the old chief Patuone, who remembered tlie arrival of Cook and lived to be 108. years old, and another of a slmggylooking, but very convincing Maori girl. There is also a good sketch portrait of ( Te Rangihaeata, “The Dawn of Day,” painted by Charles Heaphy about 1840. He is thin and indomit-able-looking with his hula feather and his cloak about him. There are other portraits of him included in the exhibition —an original drawing and a' lithpgraph by Captain Oliver. Augustus Earle spent the year 1827 in the Bay of Islands and Hokianga districts; A fine oil painting by him shows his meeting with Hongi, the great warrior., of the north. Two other pictures by him are on exhibition. One is of a very pleasing group of Maori maidens, whose wistful faces combine something of the true Maori, somewhat romanticised, perhaps because of Earle’s tenderness . for them, with something which is unmistakably European.

George French Angas, famous Australian artist, in 1846 spent some time painting the Maoris of the Pipitea and' other pas around Port Nicholson, also at Porirua and on Rangihaeata's island of Mana’.. His great portfolio of coloured pictures, “The New Zealanders,” is probably the most valuable book about New Zealand. Nevertheless, either Angas or his lithographer has been hardly fgir to the Maori. His children of the Pipitea pa.manage to combine the features of ’Mongolians with the crab-apple colouring of an English t’ountry-bred child. It is all very curious!