PROVENANCE
Private Collection Auckland Purchased from Artworks at the Hilton Charity auction 16 August 2002 Variety - the Children's Charity catalogue in which it was catalogued is available for purchaser.

Tumai Tawhiti (1812-1912) was partly Ngati Raukawa and partly Arawa. He married Te Aotiti, an Arawa/ Tuwharetoa woman, and lived in the hill pa at Tarukenga, overlooking Roturua.

Tumai was eleven when Hongi and his Ngapuhi warriors raided Mokoia Island in 1823, but he escaped in a canoe and found refuge at Ngongotaha, the sacred burial ground of the lake people. In 1836 Tumai took part in the battle at Te Tumu in the Bay of Plenty. He killed several of the enemy and after the action took part in the cannibal feast. On the return home he was fully tattooed over a period of three months, he was aged only twenty four.

Tumai Tawhiti had a beautiful and striking tattoo and in Goldie's time must have been one of the most prized examples of the tattooists art. Tumai also appealed to Goldie because he had participated in cannibal feasts.

He died aged 100 years at Ohinemutu in 1912. Goldie painted Tumai Tawhiti first in 1911 and again in 1913, titling that work Last of the Cannibals, it was a great critical success and now hangs in the Aigantighe Art Gallery. He repeated the subject again in 1932, 1935 and 1938.

Reference: Thanks to the late Roger Blackley and publication C F Goldie: His Life and Painting, Alister Taylor and Jan Glen, 1979.