Tamati Waka Nene

 Tamati Waka Nene. Gottfried Lindauer. 1890 C.E. Oil on canvas.

• Paintings record likenesses and bring ancestral presence into the world of the living. 
• this portrait is not merely a representation of Tamati Waka Nene, it can be an embodiment of him. 
• Portraits and other taonga tuku iho (treasures passed down from the ancestors) are treated with great care and reverence. 
• After a person has died their portrait may be hung on the walls of family homes to be spoken to, wept over, and cherished by people with genealogical connections to them.
• Māori are the indigenous people of New Zealand. The subject of this portrait, Tamati Waka Nene, was a Rangatira or chief of the Ngāti Hao people in Hokianga, of the Ngāpuhi iwi or tribe, and an important war leader.
• He was probably born in the 1780s, and died in 1871. He lived through a time of rapid change in New Zealand, when the first British missionaries and settlers were arriving. 
• In this portrait, Nene wears a kahu kiwi, a fine cloak covered in kiwi feathers, and an earring of greenstone or pounamu. Both of these are prestigious taonga or treasures. He is holding a hand weapon known as a tewhatewha, which has feathers adorning its blade and a finely carved hand grip with an abalone or paua eye. All of these mark him as man of mana or personal efficacy and status. But perhaps the most striking feature for an international audience is his intricate facial tattoo, called moko.
• Artist important painted Maori figures: his paintings are realistic, convincingly three-dimensional, and play beautifully with the contrast between light and shadow, causing his subjects to glow against their dark backgrounds.
• Lindauer was a Czech artist who arrived in New Zealand in 1873 after a decade of painting professionally in Europe.
• Painted after subject died; it is likely that Lindauer based this portrait on a photograph. 
• Lindauer didn’t make many sketches. He worked straight onto stretched canvas, outlining his subjects in pencil over a white background before applying translucent paints and glazes. Through the thinly painted surface of some of his works you can still see traces of pencil lines that may be evidence of his practice of outlining projected images. 
• Lindauer was working from black and white images and reimagining them in color.