PROVENANCE Artist's Collection 1883 - 1908 Collection of the artist's son Hector Fine Jewels, Decorative Arts & Fine Furniture, Webb's 24/06/1998 Private Collection, Auckland

Born in Waimarama, Hawkes Bay in 1800, Te Mahikai, Rangitira of Ngati Kahungunu was a signatory of the Treaty of Waitangi in June 1840. At the time of his death in 1886, Te Mahikai was the last tattooed Chief of Waimarama. This impeccably provenanced, pristine work was held by the artist until gifted to his son Hector in 1908, on the occasion of his 21st birthday.

Gottfried Lindauer, along with C F Goldie, is the best-known painter of Maori subjects from the late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries. Born in Pilsen, Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire he trained professionally at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, migrating to New Zealand in 1874.

Lindauer's first portraits of Maori were painted in Nelson. A move to Auckland in the mid 1870s proved crucial. There he met businessman, Henry Partridge (1848-1931), who over the next 30 years commissioned from Lindauer numerous portraits of eminent Maori, as well as large-scale depictions of traditional Maori life. Lindauer travelled extensively throughout New Zealand living in a variety of locations besides Nelson and Auckland, notably Christchurch, Napier where he was closely associated with the photographer Samuel Carnell (1832-1920), also a well-known portraitist of Maori, and finally, from 1889, Woodville. Lindauer retained his European and Czech connections.

In 1886 he attended the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London, where twelve of his Maori portraits were exhibited. The commissioner of the New Zealand pavilion was Walter Buller (1838-1906), a lawyer who represented both Maori and European clients, and an important patron of the artist. Lindauer and his family lived in Europe, mainly Germany from 1900 to 1902 and again from 1911 to 1914, with short visits to Bohemia. During this time several of his Maori portraits were placed in public and private collections there. Besides Lindauer's portraits of eminent Maori, he produced many of little-known or ordinary Maori people, most of whom wear European dress, as would have been the case in their daily life.

Henry Partridge opened a gallery in Queen Street, Auckland, in 1901, which initially featured 40 of Lindauer's Maori portraits. By the time Partridge gifted his Lindauer collection to the Auckland Art Gallery in 1915, there were 62 portraits. The historian, James Cowan (1870-1943) wrote a descriptive catalogue of the collection describing it as unrivalled in the world.

Lindauer's contribution and legacy to the history of art in New Zealand is considerable and highly valued.