19th-century perceptions of Māori

19th-century perceptions of Māori

In the early 1900s a few New Zealand scholars believed that Māori history and culture might provide the basis for a national intellectual tradition. The painter Charles Goldie shared this view. His nostalgic images such as this 1903 oil portrait, ‘Darby and Joan’, tended to perpetuate the notion that the Māori were a sad and dying race.