Feast at the Bay of Islands, September 1849

This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).

This watercolour illustrates a great hākari, or feast, at Kororāreka — known today as Russell — held over August and September 1849 and hosted by the Ngāpuhi rangatira (chief) Tāmati Wāka Nene to promote peace between his ally, Governor George Grey, and other Ngāpuhi who had fought against the Crown between 1845 and 1846. Hākari demonstrated manaakitanga (generous hospitality) and mana (prestige), and in nineteenth-century northern New Zealand the feast was sometimes displayed on impressive purpose-built structures, as depicted here. The artist, Captain Richard Aldworth Oliver of HMS Fly, observed provisions on each of the structure’s platforms and Māori attaching ‘pieces of calico and blankets’ to the posts. We might interpret these colourful Western fabrics as Māori ‘flags’ challenging the authority of the British flags that had created so much conflict in Kororāreka earlier in the decade. To the right of the structure is what appears to be a line of bearers, perhaps carrying more food, entering the hākari enclosure past a large building, probably for visitors’ accommodation.

Some scholars believe the watercolour is of insufficient aesthetic merit to be included alongside the work of professional artists in New Zealand art histories, stressing its value instead as a documentary record of a historical event. Alternatively we could view Oliver as one of a number of untrained artists enacting their social aspirations through their practice, since travel sketching and painting was a gentlemanly pastime. Oliver was also aware that money could be made from published travel art, although the market for exotic images had already been saturated by the time he produced A series of lithographic drawings from sketches in New Zealand in 1852.

Despite their cultural differences, both Oliver the artist and Nene the architect were working towards the same objective. Oliver had seized the opportunity to depict a rare scene in the hope of socially and financially capitalising on its display and reproduction, while Nene built this magnificent structure to exhibit his resources and thereby enrich his mana. Contemporary appreciation of the watercolour, illuminated by an understanding of its Pākehā and Māori importance, thus bridges the divide between artist and subject.

Deirdre Brown