A PORTRAIT GALLERY OF FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN

Te Ao Hou, September 1965, Page 34

Alexander Turnbull Library photographs Lindauer painted these women in front of ‘Heretaunga’, the meeting-house that once stood at Pakowhai near Napier. A surviving photograph of the carving shows the accuracy of this copy. A PORTRAIT GALLERY OF FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN In the Auckland City Art Gallery there is a famous collection of portraits of great Maori men and women of the past. They were painted by Gottfried Lindauer. who was born in Bohemia (Czechoslovakia) in 1839. and came to live in New Zealand in 1873. He was at once attracted to the Maori people, and with his directness and simplicity of temperament and natural gaiety, he soon won many friends amongst them. After he had been in New Zealand for a few months he visited Auckland, where he became friendly with a young man named Henry Partridge, also a newcomer to the country. Partridge had often visited remote Maori villages with his friend James MacKay, the almost legendary figure who was then Civil Commissioner for the Coromandel district. There he learnt to know and greatly admire the old-time rangatira and their way of life. When Lindauer showed Partridge his sketches of Maori people. Partridge conceived the idea of a collection of paintings which would preserve the memory of the old Maori way of life, and of the famous Maori figures of that time. Thus a friendship and partnership was born which was to last for 50 years. At that time Partridge was only 26, was married with a family, and had been in business for only a year. Nevertheless he commissioned Lindauer to paint the first of the portraits, and added to his collection whenever funds permitted. In time Henry Partridge's collection of Lindauer's paintings grew to include 70 pictures. Some were scenes of Maori life, such as that reproduced on this page, but most were portraits. The great majority of them were painted from life, and they were done with meticulous accuracy. As an artist Lin-

dauer had his limitations, but his portraits are most faithful likenesses. The garments, moko, weapons and ornaments of his subjects are also recorded with great accuracy of detail. The paintings commissioned were mostly of famous men and women of the time, and it is this which makes the collection so very valuable today. In some cases the Lindauer portrait is the only surviving record of their appearance, and most of them are by far the best likenesses available. The fact that all these people are presented as seen through the eyes of the one artist gives the collection an added impact. Row upon row, in these paintings they still live today. In 1915 Henry Partridge gave his collection to the people of Auckland, his only condition being that they should contribute £10.000 to a fund for Belgian war refugees. In a book shortly to be published by A. H. & A. W. Reed Ltd., a selection of 48 of the paintings are published in colour. Royalties from the sale of the book are to be donated to the Maori Education Foundation by Mrs E. L. Clayton, daughter of Mr Partridge and sponsor of the publication. One of the best known of Lindauer's portraits is his painting, shown above, right, of King Tawhiao. Tawhiao Matutaera Potalau Te Whero-whero, the second king of the Waikato tribes, was a chief of a very high lineage, being a descendant of Hoturoa and also connected by another line of descent with Tamatekapua. He was declared king at Ngaruawahia in 1860, on the death of his father Te Wherowhero, and led his people with dignity and integrity through the difficult years of the Waikato war and its aftermath. The high chief Te Hapuku (see portrait, right) was one of the leading rangatiras of the Hawkes Bay district, a spirited and autocratic warrior chief of the old school. In about 1853. Hapuku and his people were driven northwards away from the Heretaunga district, in the course of intertribal warfare amongst the hapus of Ngati-Kahungunu. Twenty-five years later, when Hapuku lay dying in his village on the shores of Te Aute Lake, he was visited by Sir George Grey, who was responsible for a final reconciliation between him and Karaitiana, the leader of his enemies.