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-