41
CHARLES FREDERICK GOLDIE - A Rangatira of High Lineage, Takahi Atama Paparangi,
Estimate:
$1,500,000 - $2,500,000
Passed
Live Auction
Important & Rare Art
Size
46 x 41 cm
Description
Oil on canvas
Condition
To request a condition report, please contact us at auctions@artcntr.co.nz or phone +64 9 379 4010
Signature
Signed & dated 1934
Provenance
Purchased directly from the artist in 1934
Private Collection, Wellington
Private Collection, Auckland
Private Collection, Wellington
Private Collection, Auckland
Literature
CHARLES GOLDIE
Throughout his lifetime and beyond Charles Frederick Goldie greatly influenced our nation’s artistic and cultural consciousness. Born in Auckland on 20 October 1870, one of eight children from the marriage of Maria Partington and David Goldie, he was named after his maternal grandfather, Charles Frederick Partington, builder of the landmark Auckland windmill.
In 1883, the young Goldie was enrolled at Auckland Grammar School. His youthful artistic talents shone and it was not long before he was winning prizes at the Auckland Society of Arts. On leaving school, Louis John Steele became his mentor and tutor. Two of the young artist’s still life paintings so impressed Sir George Grey that he convinced David Goldie to allow his 22-year-old son to attend the Académie Julian in Paris. Goldie spent over four years at the Académie Julian tutored by leading lights of the Paris Salon, such as artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau.
In 1898, fully informed in the French academic style, Goldie returned to New Zealand and began collaborating with his former tutor Louis John Steele. The two worked on a number of paintings including Arrival of the Māori in New Zealand, a large scale historically-themed painting after Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa. Before long, the relationship deteriorated, likely caused by tensions around the former student’s growing success. Goldie went on to open his own studio, quickly establishing himself as a successful portraitist of Māori.
A visit to Rotorua in 1901, was the first of several field trips during which the artist was introduced to local Māori and persuaded them to sit for portraits. Atama Paparangi, a favoured subject of C F Goldie’s and Chief of the Te Rarawa Tribe, Atama lived at Mitimiti, Hokianga. At over six foot tall, with an intricate facial moko by the famous tattooist Huitara, he was a strikingly handsome figure. The artist and his subject met in 1901 during a royal visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall. A warm friendship developed and in 1914 Goldie completed a portrait of Atama Paparangi, now housed in the collection of the Auckland War Memorial Museum.
Goldie’s works from this point forward strongly reflect the European tradition in which he was trained, and possess a stunning power and visual clarity. On the one hand, his remarkable dedication to realism belies an ethnographic interest, at the same time he was also striving to capture the mana of his sitters who included chiefs, tohunga and kaumatua. Goldie formed long-standing relationships with several Māori he met and painted around this period, including Wiremu Pātara Te Tuhi and Te Aho-o-te-rangi Wharepu (Ngāti Mahuta), Ina te Papatahi (Ngāpuhi), and Wharekauri Tahuna (Ngāti Manawa).
Over the next two decades, Goldie gained national and international acclaim and steady demand formed a strong market for his portraits. A number of these would later be exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, in London, and the Paris Salon, throughout the 1930s.
In 1920, the artist moved to Sydney, where despite original plans to continue on to Paris was married at age 50 to 35-year- old old Olive Cooper. Marriage in Sydney circumvented the Goldie family disapproval of the relationship between Auckland’s most famous artist and the milliner from Karangahape Road. After two years in Sydney, apparently disillusioned with his work at this time and suffering from health problems, Charles and Olive returned to New Zealand.
Goldie’s return to Auckland in 1924, ultimately represented a moment of artistic reckoning. Goldie received encouragement to resume painting from Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe. Devoting himself once again to his work he began to apply a more liberal, impressionistic approach to the realisation of his portraits and returned to painting a number of his former subjects. Works from this later period are distinguished by their soft luminescence, offering a rhythmic departure and disconnection from the rigours of formalism, which he had so strictly adhered to in the past.
Goldie died in Auckland in 1947, his exquisite, spiritually-charged, often unsettling and ever powerful portraits of Māori having made an unsurpassed contribution to the history of art in New Zealand.
Throughout his lifetime and beyond Charles Frederick Goldie greatly influenced our nation’s artistic and cultural consciousness. Born in Auckland on 20 October 1870, one of eight children from the marriage of Maria Partington and David Goldie, he was named after his maternal grandfather, Charles Frederick Partington, builder of the landmark Auckland windmill.
In 1883, the young Goldie was enrolled at Auckland Grammar School. His youthful artistic talents shone and it was not long before he was winning prizes at the Auckland Society of Arts. On leaving school, Louis John Steele became his mentor and tutor. Two of the young artist’s still life paintings so impressed Sir George Grey that he convinced David Goldie to allow his 22-year-old son to attend the Académie Julian in Paris. Goldie spent over four years at the Académie Julian tutored by leading lights of the Paris Salon, such as artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau.
In 1898, fully informed in the French academic style, Goldie returned to New Zealand and began collaborating with his former tutor Louis John Steele. The two worked on a number of paintings including Arrival of the Māori in New Zealand, a large scale historically-themed painting after Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa. Before long, the relationship deteriorated, likely caused by tensions around the former student’s growing success. Goldie went on to open his own studio, quickly establishing himself as a successful portraitist of Māori.
A visit to Rotorua in 1901, was the first of several field trips during which the artist was introduced to local Māori and persuaded them to sit for portraits. Atama Paparangi, a favoured subject of C F Goldie’s and Chief of the Te Rarawa Tribe, Atama lived at Mitimiti, Hokianga. At over six foot tall, with an intricate facial moko by the famous tattooist Huitara, he was a strikingly handsome figure. The artist and his subject met in 1901 during a royal visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall. A warm friendship developed and in 1914 Goldie completed a portrait of Atama Paparangi, now housed in the collection of the Auckland War Memorial Museum.
Goldie’s works from this point forward strongly reflect the European tradition in which he was trained, and possess a stunning power and visual clarity. On the one hand, his remarkable dedication to realism belies an ethnographic interest, at the same time he was also striving to capture the mana of his sitters who included chiefs, tohunga and kaumatua. Goldie formed long-standing relationships with several Māori he met and painted around this period, including Wiremu Pātara Te Tuhi and Te Aho-o-te-rangi Wharepu (Ngāti Mahuta), Ina te Papatahi (Ngāpuhi), and Wharekauri Tahuna (Ngāti Manawa).
Over the next two decades, Goldie gained national and international acclaim and steady demand formed a strong market for his portraits. A number of these would later be exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, in London, and the Paris Salon, throughout the 1930s.
In 1920, the artist moved to Sydney, where despite original plans to continue on to Paris was married at age 50 to 35-year- old old Olive Cooper. Marriage in Sydney circumvented the Goldie family disapproval of the relationship between Auckland’s most famous artist and the milliner from Karangahape Road. After two years in Sydney, apparently disillusioned with his work at this time and suffering from health problems, Charles and Olive returned to New Zealand.
Goldie’s return to Auckland in 1924, ultimately represented a moment of artistic reckoning. Goldie received encouragement to resume painting from Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe. Devoting himself once again to his work he began to apply a more liberal, impressionistic approach to the realisation of his portraits and returned to painting a number of his former subjects. Works from this later period are distinguished by their soft luminescence, offering a rhythmic departure and disconnection from the rigours of formalism, which he had so strictly adhered to in the past.
Goldie died in Auckland in 1947, his exquisite, spiritually-charged, often unsettling and ever powerful portraits of Māori having made an unsurpassed contribution to the history of art in New Zealand.
Exhibited
Alister Taylor and Jan Glen, C.F Goldie (1870 – 1940): His Life and Painting, Martinborough,1977, p.272
