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Gottfried Lindauer's New Zealand: The Maori Portraits Author: Ngahiraka Mason and Zara Stanhope isbn: 9781869408565

From the 1870s to the early twentieth century, the Bohemian immigrant artist Gottfried Lindauer travelled to marae and rural towns around New Zealand and – commissioned by Maori and Pakeha – captured in paint the images of key Maori figures. For Maori then and now, the faces of tipuna are full of mana and life. Now this definitive book on Lindauer’s portraits of the ancestors collects that work for New Zealanders.

The book presents 67 major portraits and 8 genre paintings alongside detailed accounts of the subject and work, followed by essays by leading scholars that take us inside Lindauer and his world: from his artistic training in Bohemia to his travels around New Zealand as Maori and Pakeha commissioned him to paint portraits; his artistic techniques and deep relationship with photography; Henry Partridge’s gallery of Lindauer works on Queen Street in Auckland where Maori visited to see their ancestors; and the afterlife of the paintings in marae and memory.

For Maori, the faces that look out from Lindauer’s portraits are tribal leaders and family members. They are tohunga and politicians. They are ancestors and friends. Gottfried Lindauer met Maori tipuna at the most basic level of human connection by capturing their likeness. This book returns the ancestors and the artist to the people.

2016 Hardback 320 pages As new and unread condition