Significant Charles Goldie painting fetches $1.8m, will return to Aotearoa

A culturally and historically significant Charles Frederick Goldie painting will be repatriated to New Zealand from Australia after being auctioned.

The piece, Reverie: Ena te Papatahi, a Ngapuhi Chieftainess (Ina Te Papatahi, Nga Puhi), was completed in 1916 but was auctioned by Sydney-based auction house Smith & Singer this week.

It depicts Te Papatahi seated upon a paepae (carved threshold) at the front of a wharenui (meeting house). Te Papatahi was an expert on tukutuku panels and weaving, and was the niece of Tāmati Wāka Nene, one of Aotearoa’s most influential rangatira (a Māori chief or noble).

The painting sold for the record price of $1.75m AUD ($1.8m NZD) to private collectors, Chris Anderson and his wife Virginia.

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Its sale price represented a new world auction record for the artist, Smith & Singer said.

Chris Anderson was from the same iwi of Ngāpuhi in the Northland region as the painting’s subject, and told Stuff it was important to him to bring the painting back to New Zealand.

Anderson grew up in Whakatane, where his father owned a hotel he decorated with Goldie prints.

“I used to marvel at them. I absolutely loved them,” Anderson said.

It soon became a goal of Anderson’s to secure his own original Goldie, but missed the auction date –however, in a twist of fate, the Goldie did not sell.

After successfully securing the painting, Anderson started to talk to his relatives up north to figure out how he could bring the painting home.

“I started thinking about my Nan, and if I would want her picture hanging in someone’s dining room in a foreign country,” he said.

Anderson said he was told that bringing the painting across the ditch would be “economic suicide”, but he does not care if the painting decreases in value.

“This painting will never be sold,” Anderson said, explaining that he feels like more of a caretaker than the owner.

The Andersons planned to repatriate the painting to New Zealand and consult with the sitter’s descendants about the most appropriate and culturally sensitive way to display the painting that fully acknowledged and respected cultural and social sensitivities, said Geoffrey Smith, the chairperson of Smith & Singer.

“If the family are willing to have it shown, then I want them to have access to it. It’s certainly not going to sit on our wall,” Anderson said.

Stuff previously reported on concerns about the painting remaining offshore and the impact its sale might have on the subject’s descendants.

These days, legislation exists which would likely prohibit the export of such a painting as a protected object. But objects held outside of New Zealand are not covered by the Protected Objects Act. With its imminent return to New Zealand, it is unlikely the work would ever be approved by officials to leave the country again.

After being painted by Goldie in Auckland, the artwork went to a private collection in the United Kingdom and then to veteran Sydney-based art dealer Denis Savill.

Smith said the painting now “makes its way home”, following a lengthy period in English and Australian collections.

Richard Thomson, from the International Art Centre in Auckland, said before it was auctioned by Smith & Singer, the work was due to come to the centre to be sold.

But because of uncertainty over whether it could be taken out of New Zealand if it were sold to an overseas buyer, or if it didn’t sell, “the owner decided to offer it for sale in his homeland Australia,” Thomson said previously.

Savill has been contacted for comment.

Goldie, who lived between 1870 and 1947, is known for his documentation of Māori, and painted Te Papatahi nearly 20 times over a 14-year period.

The oil on canvas which sold this week was 45.7cm by 40.7cm.