Details
French School, late 18th Century, after William Hodges, R.A.
Man of New Zealand
unstretched and unframed
11 x 8¾ in. (27.9 x 22.2cm.)
After Michel's engraving (Cook (1777) II, pl. LV; JS 2.90A) of Hodges' red chalk drawing (JS 2.90 'Portrait of a maori chieftain')
Man of New Zealand
unstretched and unframed
11 x 8¾ in. (27.9 x 22.2cm.)
After Michel's engraving (Cook (1777) II, pl. LV; JS 2.90A) of Hodges' red chalk drawing (JS 2.90 'Portrait of a maori chieftain')
Provenance
as Lot 50
The present picture follows the direction of Michel's engraving. There is some simplification of the tatooing in the present oil, the only other significant difference from the drawn and engraved portraits being the open mouth which adds a degree of charm to this version of the portrait.
Joppien and Smith date Hodges' portrait to the Resolution's second visit to New Zealand when the chieftain came on board on 22 October 1773 in the vicinity of Cape Kidnappers. They also suggest the small oil study (JS 2.145(c)) in the Mitchell Library may be of the same man.
Hodges important series of New Zealand portraits are discussed at length and in their full context by Joppien and Smith: 'What is noteworthy, however, is that Hodges has, in these portraits, escaped from the ethnographic convention wth its emphasis on dress and adornment that largely determined the approach of Buchan and Parkinson on the first voyage. We find him now, in Forster's words, seeking 'characteristic faces' and 'expressive countenances'. Empirical naturalism, we might say, has moved from its search for types to a search for individual characteristics and personalities ... Portraiture was a way to the understanding of specific cases.
This is not to say that Hodges neglected the ethnographic record. He became quite skilled in presenting dress and adornment not as generally typical of all the men and women of a certain society - thus, giving a false impression - but as the costume and adornment distinctive of a person of a particular rank and role in society. A fine example is the Portrait of a Maori Chieftain (plate 36; 2.90) in the National Library of Australia, which Hodges drew on 22 October 1773 on the second visit to Queen Charlotte Sound. George Forster describes the occasion: In the morning we were to the south of Cape Kidnappers, and advanced to the Black Cape. After breakfast three canoes put off from this part of the shore, where some level land appeared at the foot of the mountains. They soon came on board as we were not very far from the land, and in one of them was a chief, who came on deck without hesitation. He was a tall middle-aged man, clothed in two new and elegant dresses, made of the New Zealand flag or flax-plant. His hair was dressed in the highest fashion of the country, tied on the crown, oiled, and stuck with white feathers. In each ear he wore a piece of albatros skin with its white down, and his face was punctured in spirals and curved lines. Mr. Hodges drew his portrait, and a print of it is inserted in captain Cook's account of this voyage.
Hodges drawing (plate 36) should be compared with Parkinson's well-known profile of a Maori warrior (polate 37; 1.126) in order to see how the former has humanized and individualized the ethnographic convention. Hodges provides the ethnography but he also evokes a presence. He does not proceed by way of a diagram, as a visual analysis equivalent, even if superior, to words, is John Locke and Joseph Banks saw the role of the travelling artist. He proceeds instead by means of a sympathetic apprehension of the whole. It is perfectly true of course that, like all artists, he structures his heads on the schematic models he had been trained to draw; but the model, for Hodges, is but a point of departure in search for feeling rather than raw facts. The imagination, we might say, has entered into the field of scientific draughtsmanship.' (Joppien and Smith, pp. 41-6)
This new humanism is retained in the enhanced open expression of the sitter in the present oil which must count amongst the earliest of all oil portraits of a New Zealander
The present picture follows the direction of Michel's engraving. There is some simplification of the tatooing in the present oil, the only other significant difference from the drawn and engraved portraits being the open mouth which adds a degree of charm to this version of the portrait.
Joppien and Smith date Hodges' portrait to the Resolution's second visit to New Zealand when the chieftain came on board on 22 October 1773 in the vicinity of Cape Kidnappers. They also suggest the small oil study (JS 2.145(c)) in the Mitchell Library may be of the same man.
Hodges important series of New Zealand portraits are discussed at length and in their full context by Joppien and Smith: 'What is noteworthy, however, is that Hodges has, in these portraits, escaped from the ethnographic convention wth its emphasis on dress and adornment that largely determined the approach of Buchan and Parkinson on the first voyage. We find him now, in Forster's words, seeking 'characteristic faces' and 'expressive countenances'. Empirical naturalism, we might say, has moved from its search for types to a search for individual characteristics and personalities ... Portraiture was a way to the understanding of specific cases.
This is not to say that Hodges neglected the ethnographic record. He became quite skilled in presenting dress and adornment not as generally typical of all the men and women of a certain society - thus, giving a false impression - but as the costume and adornment distinctive of a person of a particular rank and role in society. A fine example is the Portrait of a Maori Chieftain (plate 36; 2.90) in the National Library of Australia, which Hodges drew on 22 October 1773 on the second visit to Queen Charlotte Sound. George Forster describes the occasion: In the morning we were to the south of Cape Kidnappers, and advanced to the Black Cape. After breakfast three canoes put off from this part of the shore, where some level land appeared at the foot of the mountains. They soon came on board as we were not very far from the land, and in one of them was a chief, who came on deck without hesitation. He was a tall middle-aged man, clothed in two new and elegant dresses, made of the New Zealand flag or flax-plant. His hair was dressed in the highest fashion of the country, tied on the crown, oiled, and stuck with white feathers. In each ear he wore a piece of albatros skin with its white down, and his face was punctured in spirals and curved lines. Mr. Hodges drew his portrait, and a print of it is inserted in captain Cook's account of this voyage.
Hodges drawing (plate 36) should be compared with Parkinson's well-known profile of a Maori warrior (polate 37; 1.126) in order to see how the former has humanized and individualized the ethnographic convention. Hodges provides the ethnography but he also evokes a presence. He does not proceed by way of a diagram, as a visual analysis equivalent, even if superior, to words, is John Locke and Joseph Banks saw the role of the travelling artist. He proceeds instead by means of a sympathetic apprehension of the whole. It is perfectly true of course that, like all artists, he structures his heads on the schematic models he had been trained to draw; but the model, for Hodges, is but a point of departure in search for feeling rather than raw facts. The imagination, we might say, has entered into the field of scientific draughtsmanship.' (Joppien and Smith, pp. 41-6)
This new humanism is retained in the enhanced open expression of the sitter in the present oil which must count amongst the earliest of all oil portraits of a New Zealander