item details
Overview
This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).
Gottfried Lindauer’s portrait of Wī Tako Ngātata is a wonderfully idealised depiction of a great statesman. Painted a few years before Ngātata’s death in 1887, it presents him as a classic Māori leader, resplendent in kahukurī (dog-skin cloak) and greenstone ear pendant, even then reminiscent of a bygone era.
Lindauer painted Wī Tako three times between 1877 and 1882, based on two contemporary studio carte-de-visite photographs and presenting him in the same attitude. However, the other two paintings depict him in formal evening attire, befitting an English gentleman. This was the reality: from the 1850s onwards, Wī Tako normally wore European clothing. When one of these portraits was displayed in a Cambridge shop window in 1882, during Native Land Court hearings, it caused a minor sensation, arousing the emotions of local and visiting Māori who ‘assembled en masse’ to view it, offered oratory greetings and sang a waiata ‘composed years ago in honour of this chief’. The aged Ngāti Hauā chief Hākariwhi ‘could not resist the temptation to rub noses with the picture’.1 These were heartfelt expressions of emotion and tika (customary etiquette), when confronting the likeness of someone of great mana (prestige).
Wī Tako became an influential tribal leader during the establishment of the Wellington settlement in the 1840s. He participated in the Wellington purchase, a deal later exposed as sharp practice on the part of New Zealand Company agents, and subsequently fought hard for compensation. The rest of his life was a diplomatic mission amidst the tensions and conflicts of colonial New Zealand. An early advocate of the Māori king movement, tirelessly campaigning for the retention of Māori land, he protested: ‘You buy as much as you can of our lands and then try to cheat us out of the rest’.2 Wī Tako remained at the political forefront while tribal authority transitioned to a new generation caught between the nation-building machinery of colonial government and the survival of Māori society and maintenance of tribal authority. Isaac Featherston, Wellington superintendent, was overheard saying in Parliament that ‘Wi Tako is the cleverest man, black or white, in the country’.3
Matiu Baker
1 New Zealand Herald, 31 October 1882, p. 6.
2 AR Cairns, ‘Ngatata, Wiremu Tako’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published 1990, in Te Ara — The encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1n10/ngatata-wiremu-tako (accessed 24 November 2017).
3 Ibid.
Text originally created for Tūrangawaewae: Art and New Zealand exhibition at Te Papa, March 2018.
A formidable orator and astute politician – power and prestige personified.
Te Āti Awa iwi [tribe] leader Wī Tako Ngātata played a critical role building relations between Māori and Pākehā in the early colonial period. Increasingly disillusioned by his dealings with the Crown, he helped establish the Māori King movement. He later became a member of Parliament’s Legislative Council.
Māori have always encountered Gottfried Lindauer’s portraits on their own terms. When Lindauer displayed this painting in a Cambridge shop window, ‘Old Hakariwhi’ of Ngāti Haua iwi pressed his nose to the great leader’s.
He pūkōrero, he kaitōrangapū mūrere – te whakatinanatanga o te tangata mana nui.
He nui ngā mahi hohou i te rongo a Wi Tako Ngātata, he rangatira nō Te Āti Awa, i waenganui i te Māori me te Pākehā, i ngā tau mātāmua o te taenga mai o te Pākehā. Ka kite ia i ngā mahi
hē a te Karauna, ka tahuri atu ōna whakaaro mō te Kīngitanga. I whai wāhi ia ki te Rūnanga Ariki o te Whare Pāremata.
Ehara ngā kōwaiwai kiritangata a Gottfried Lindauer i te pikitia noa iho ki te Māori. I te whakaatutanga o tēnei kōwaiwai kiritangata e Lindauer ki tētahi toa i Cambridge, ka hongia atu e ‘Old Hakariwhi’ nō Ngāti Haua.