Story: Ideas of Māori origins

This watercolour was painted by a French artist who had never visited New Zealand. Looking more like a Roman warrior than a Māori, the man is standing against a background that is also remarkably inauthentic – the whare (house) is the wrong shape and has no carved columns. Artists living in Europe were drawing images based upon the journals of early explorers. Artworks such as these helped to create the impression that Europeans and Māori were somehow linked.

Portrait of Natai, 1833

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‘Maori bargaining with a pakeha’

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