Provenance: Private Collection, Auckland Marshall Seifert Gallery, Dunedin, 1990

Green's painting, Taieri Mouth is an early rendition showing the mouth of the Taieri, New Zealand's third longest river. Green employed a fresh palette to ably record 19th century rural antipodean life.

According to oral tradition Chief Tuwiriroa arrived from Queenstown and built a pa near the Taieri River mouth in the early 1700s. His rival, Chief Tukiauau, had already constructed a pa 10km inland on the Taieri Plain by Lake Waihola. Tuwiriroa's daughter Haki Te Kura, became famous in the region for swimming across the cold waters of Lake Wakatipu. Tukiauau's son Korokiwhiti fell in love with Tuwiriroa's daughter but her father disapproved.

Korokiwhiti's father was a hunted man. Hearing his enemies had discovered his whereabouts he decided to abandon the river settlement and move his people further south. As they came down the river by canoe the distraught young woman attempted to jump from a rock into her lover's craft but struck the prow and was killed. Her head was then severed and held up angrily to her people on the shore as the flotilla passed by to the sea. There were repercussions and Tukiauau and his son were pursued by Tuwiriroa's tribe and eventually killed. Maori occupation continued until the mid 1850s.