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Overview
This high-quality chromolithographs is a reproduction of a painting by Charles Frederick Goldie, preeminent painter of Māori portraits in the early 20th century. It was produced and distributed around Christmastime in illustrated newspapers such as The Graphic, or the Auckland Weekly News. Examples of this print often framed and hung in pride of place in both Pākehā and Māori households. This print is of particular interest as it has been mounted in a carefully made frame, carved with Māori designs and with inlaid paua that personalise the prints.
'A Good Joke' is directly made from a portrait of one of Goldie's favourite sitters, Te Aho-o-te-Rangi Wharepu, Ngāti Mahuta. The original painting is in Dunedin Public Art Gallery collection.
'A Good Joke' seems to have been available in two printings, the first in 1906, when it was offered as a supplement to the Auckland Star, and again in 1921-2, when it was described as being ‘printed in full colours on heavy art paper, and is eminently suitable for framing’ (Auckland Star, 21 January 1922, p. 6). However on both occasions, the print was not only available as a supplement, a giveaway, but also available to purchase, in which instance it could be posted in a cardboard tube! (Auckland Star, 8 November 1906, p. 6)
They are valuable works not only for who they picture and being by Goldie, but also for the way they demonstrate the reproduction and circulation of works of art in the early twentieth century. While, as Roger Blackley acknowledges, the reproduction of Goldie’s paintings in this way were problematic for the Māori subjects, they were, at the same time, ‘eagerly collected by Māori, placed in meeting houses and displayed at tangi’. (Blackley, p. 48)