The representation of the Maori by European artists from c.1840 to c.1914

Abstract

This thesis deals with the visual representation of the Maori by Europeans from the time New Zealand became a colony of Britain to the period in which it became an independent nation, a Dominion within the British Empire. It does not attempt to survey the vast number of such representations, but rather involves an investigation of the meanings and functions for Europeans of a selection of oil paintings, watercolours, lithographs and engravings. In most instances they are works by professional artists or aspiring professionals, and/or works that were exhibited, published or collected in New Zealand, Australia, or Britain. The artists whose representations are examined in most detail include G. F. Angas, S. C. Brees, R. A. Oliver, J. J. Merrett, C. Clarke, J. W. Carmichael, J. Smetham, J. A. Gilfillan, W. Strutt, N. Chevalier, H. G. Robley, G. F. von Tempsky, L. J. Steele, K. Watkins, W. Wright, J. E. Moultray, M. T. Clayton, G. Lindauer and W. Dittmer. Works by other artists are referred to also. Groups of images published in missionary periodicals and The Illustrated London News are looked at closely too. The representations concentrated on are either key images of the period or ones that exemplify matters central to the representation of the Maori by Europeans. The text concentrates primarily on how the Maori was represented, the differing views of the Maori, Maori culture and history, and Maori-European interaction depicted, and the uses and meanings of the representations in specific social and cultural contexts. To these ends a number of fundamental factors are discussed: 1. The formal and iconographic sources and models; the manner in which representations of the Maori were determined or mediated by conventions and codes in European art and image making. 2. The circumstances of production, exhibition, publication, distribution and collection of the representations. 3. The ideas, beliefs, tastes and values - aesthetic, social, political and religious, for instance - sustaining the representations and which the representations sustained; the discourses in European culture they participated in. In particular, since the representations examined were produced during the period in which New Zealand was colonised, and in which European culture became dominant, Maori culture subordinate, the nature of the relationships between particular representations and the ideology of colonialism and imperialism is a central consideration. The excavation of the ideological, though, is not intended to exclude or diminish a more purely aesthetic reading of the works. It is contended that European depictions of the Maori, rather than ever representing the Maori "as they were", involved fashioning "realities" for them- "realities" that were primarily geared to European tastes, beliefs, requirements and interests, however much these "realities" might conflict with perceptions of the socio-political, psychological and physical conditions of the Maori by the Maori themselves or by later historians and critics. As such the images discussed often tell more about British culture, European culture in New Zealand and colonialist ideology than about their ostensible subjects, the Maori. The approaches to the interpretation of visual representations of the Maori adopted in this thesis are not intended to disallow differing approaches and emphases. My readings are not set up as definitive. The plurality of meanings and levels of operation that visual representations can have is recognised.