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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen-Webb's
• Sale Name:
  Important Paintings & Contemporary Art
• Sale Date:
  11 Apr 2017 ~ 6.30pm (NZ time)
• Lot #:
  30
• Lot Description:
  Charles Frederick Goldie
  Ka Ra Te Wera or A Hot Day
  oil on canvas, 1919
  245mm x 191mm
  signed C F Goldie and dated 1919 in brushpoint upper right, inscribed Ka... A Hot Day partial inscription in ink on distressed original artist's paper label affixed verso, original John Leech Gallery label affixed verso, housed in original frame
  NOTE: The correct Maori translation of A Hot Day is Ka Wera Te Ra, not Ka Ra Te Wera, as Goldie has titled this work.
• Provenance:
  Aquired directly from the artist by Frederick and Olive Wilson, the present owners' grandparents and passed by descent. The present owners' aunt Jean Wilson was married to Tup Goldie, the artist's nephew. Charles Goldie was friendly with the Wilson family and it is believed that this work was gifted to the present owners' grandmother, Olive Wilson. Upon Olive's death in 1961, the work passed by descent to the present owners.
• References:
  Taylor, Alister and Glen, Jan, C.F.Goldie 1870 - 1947: His Life and Paintings, published by Alister Taylor, Martinborough, 1977, p. 254.
• Notes:
  We do not know the identity of the boy who sleeps so peacefully in Ka ra te wera: A Hot Day (1919), even though he is portrayed by Charles Goldie with such fidelity that we feel convinced that there was such an individual and that it could not be an imagined subject. The boy bears some resemblance to Hamiora Haupapa, painted more than once in 1901 and also asleep in one of his portraits, titled Caught Napping . But while in that work, Hamiora is arrayed in the Māori accoutrements that Goldie so often employed - a flax cloak and greenstone heitiki - the boy in A Hot Day, painted 18 years later, wears European clothes: a faded green jacket over a cream shirt. The pale colours of the fabrics are a perfect foil for his ruffled black hair and smooth, deeply bronze skin, and are offset by the dark shadow cast by his head against the carved post on which he leans: a poupou, which speaks of his Māori ancestry. Goldie had titled an earlier painting A Hot Day too - one of his 1901 studies of Pātara te Tuhi, a well-known work in Christchurch Art Gallery. Unlike in Goldie's portrait of him as a warrior in chiefly garments, in this work, Pātara is 'caught napping' wearing every-day dress with only his chiselled moko and greenstone earring reminding us of his mana and his heroic past. His great age is particularly pronounced as he sleeps, evoking a pathos that suggests that his glory days are over. Goldie has often been characterised - and censured - as an artist depicting Māori as a dying race but A Hot Day of 1919 defies that reading. The small scale of the work, which is mounted in its distinctive original frame, draws in the viewer and our eyes linger on the smoothly sensual surfaces of the young face, depicted with Goldie's consummate skill. The sense of intimacy this close viewing evokes, and the fact that the boy is unaware of our scrutiny, may make him seem vulnerable but the warmth of the sun on his skin and relaxed ease with which his slumbering head has come to rest on the carving counter the sense of melancholy prevalent in Goldie's more customary images of venerable Māori. This youthful sitter strikes a different note from that of those elderly subjects who, especially when asleep, imply the frailty of old age and the sadness of dreaming about a past that is disappearing. The boy depicted in A Hot Day suggests a more positive view - of a young Māori who enjoys dozing in the sun and who will wake refreshed to embrace the future. ELIZABETH RANKIN
• Estimate:
  NZ$280,000 - 380,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.