Gottfried Lindauer Portraits

The Bohemian émigré painter Gottfried Lindauer (1839–1926) moved to New Zealand in 1874 and devoted the rest of his life to painted portraits of Māori chiefs and leaders. Working from photographs, he rendered each sitter's tā moko facial tattoos, feathered hei-tiki pendants, and whalebone ornaments in meticulous detail — turning his canvases into ethnographic records and, simultaneously, into the contemporary ancestral portraits that Māori whānau (families) would honour in their wharenui meeting houses. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki holds the largest single collection of Lindauer's Māori portraits and devotes a permanent gallery to them.

Exhibition Venue

Auckland Art Gallery

Auckland, New Zealand