PROVENANCE Webb's, Fine New Zealand & Foreign Paintings, 03/04/2001, Lot No.43 Private Collection, New Zealand

Gottfried Lindauer, along with Charles Goldie, is the best- known painter of Māori 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, emigrating to New Zealand in 1874.

Lindauer's first portraits of Māori were painted in Nelson. A move to Auckland in the mid 1870s proved crucial, there he met businessman, Henry Partridge (1848-1931). Over the next 30 years, Partridge commissioned Lindauer to paint numerous portraits of eminent Māori, as well as large-scale depictions of traditional Māori 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) and finally, from 1889, Woodville.

In 1886, Lindauer attended the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London, where 12 of his Māori portraits were exhibited. The commissioner of the New Zealand pavilion was Walter Buller (1838-1906). 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 Māori portraits were placed in public and private collections there.

Henry Partridge opened a gallery in Queen Street, Auckland, in 1901, which initially featured 40 of Lindauer's Māori 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.