PAINTING OF MAORI CHIEF

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23594, 2 September 1938, Page 10

PAINTING OF MAORI CHIEF

“AN UNSKILFUL COPY ” COMMENT BY AUCKLAND ARTIST (Special to Daily Times) AUCKLAND, Sept. 1. Anv mystery that may have surrounded the painting of a Maori which was recently purchased m a Sydnev dealer’s shoo by Mr T. H. Smith ot Wanganui, has been cleared up by the well-known Auckland artist, Mr C. * Goldie, to whom the picture was attributed. Mr Goldie to-day received a photograph of the picture from Wellington and pronounced it to be a copy by some other hand of a painting by him, “A Warm Day,’ which hangs in the Christchurch Art Gallery. “A Warm Day,” said Mr Goldie, represented the famous old chief Patara Te Tuhi asleep in the sun with his shirt open at the neck. It had been reproduced in colour a number oi years ago as a supplement to the Christmas issue of the Weekly Press. Christchurch. The reproduction had enjoyed wide popularity, and numbers of prints were 'still to be seen all oyer the Dominion. The Sydney painting was clearly a copy which had been made from the reproduction. “ I consider it an unskilful copy,” Mr Goldie added. "The lower part of the picture, for example, is a good deal out of drawing.”