Remarkable Understanding

Te Ao Hou, September 1963, Page 28

Remarkable Understanding It is especially remarkable that he should have shown so sophisticated a comprehension of Maori sculpture, for in 1844 there were practically no Europeans who had any understanding of art of this kind. At the time of his visit there were still some carved and painted houses and monuments of the same quality as those which were the principal glory of pre-European Maori culture. Angas' lucid and lovingly detailed drawings recorded the splendour of these buildings just before they finally vanished. Writing of the Maori, Angas said that their character was ‘a strange mixture of pride, vanity … covetousness and generosity, passion and gentleness …’ It is their pride which is most apparent in his drawings: pride, and the kind of innocence which is possible only for a people who may have defeated each other, but who have never been defeated by outsiders.