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This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).
In 1894, Louis John Steele’s studio in Victoria Arcade on Shortland Street, Auckland, was described as a ‘combination of an art gallery, museum and general curiosity shop, with himself as a genial showman’.1 Certainly the English-born, Paris- and Italian-trained artist brought a dose of bohemianism to the colonial art scene when he arrived in New Zealand in 1886.
Steele earned a place in New Zealand art history for his grandiose history paintings, often produced in collaboration with his students, such as the Blowing up of the Boyd. But Maori figures looking across an estuary reveals another side of his work. Steele had developed a reputation for engraving in London — his prints were praised for their ‘“mossy touch” and exceptional richness of tone’2 — and also practised the art of the miniature. Maori figures looking across an estuary contains elements of both genres. It is a small oil painting on board, picturing three Māori figures, two seated and one standing with a baby on her back who looks towards the horizon.
Steele appears to have used free brushstrokes and sketchily defined figures to convey a sense of immediacy. But the shimmering palette and impressionist style are deceptive. This slight painting is rich in detail, executed with all the care of a plate prepared for an engraving. The artist has chosen an ambiguous light, neither clearly dawn nor dusk, and employs a highly charged palette, the turquoise sky and sea offsetting the iridescence of the sunlight seeping through the clouds.
The image offers a haunting scene and suggestive readings. Even within this diminutive painting the Māori figures are dwarfed, both by the rugged pōhutukawa and the expanses of land, sea and sky, and there is no sign of a dwelling or nearby settlement. From which period do these figures hail? Is Steele imagining pre-colonial Māori, nomadic and wandering, or are these contemporary figures, alienated from their whenua, and seeking new lands?
Rebecca Rice
1 John Stacpoole, ‘Steele, Louis John’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published 1993, in Te Ara — The encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2s42/steele-louis-john (accessed 24 November 2017).
2 Ibid.
These small, informally painted views offer intimate studies of everyday Maori life in the late 1800s. They depict humble, sentimental scenes - in contrast to the staged, grandiose paintings by Lindauer and Goldie in this gallery.
The artist, John Louis Steele, appears to have used free brushstrokes and sketchily defined figures to convey a sense of immediacy. But the shimmering palette and impressionist style are deceptive. Both scenes are rich in detail, evident in the foliage, fire, and food, and the child waiting under the pataka (storehouse).
Ko tā ngā pikitia iti nei, he āta whakaahua i te noho a te Māori i ngā tau 1800. He noho hūmarire, he noho mauritau – he rerekē anō ki te āhua o ngā pikitia whakahirahira a Lindauer rāua ko Goldie i nga pakitara o tēnei whare toi.
Ko tā John Louis Steele, he tuku noa i tana paraihe kia rere, hei whakaahua i ngā tāngata, i te wāhi. He tinihanga noa te pīataata mai o ngā tae me tana whai i nga tikanga toi kōpura;. Kua ā ta tā ia ngā ā huatanga katoa o ngā pikitia, hei tauira ko te hanganga o ngā rā kau, o te ahi, o te kai, o ngā pā taka me te tamaiti e whanga atu rā.