Earliest sketches of NZ, Goldie at Christie's

Media release – September 12, 2005

Earliest sketches of NZ in lot expected to fetch stg7000 – and a Goldie worth stg15,000 at Christies

Some of the earliest sketches of New Zealand towns go under the hammer at Christie’s next week in a lot expected to fetch stg7000.

The 1853 sketches are by Frederick Mackie and show scenes including Wairau, Kaiteriteri, Nelson, Motueka, Riwaka,Queen Charlotte Sound, Tinakori Rd Wellington, Petone Pa, Port Nicholson from the hills behind Wellington and Paramata.

A Christie’s spokesman said Mackie’s sketches were some of the ``earliest, detailed drawings’’ of the northern areas of the South Island and there were also plentiful sketches in and around Wellington.

Mackie, from north Yorkshire, produced sketches of New Zealand towns and cities like Wellington and Nelson showing only a handful of buildings more than 150 years ago.

Mackie and Robert Lindsey, a fellow Quaker, carried out a missionary tour of Australia and New Zealand. Mackie's diaries begin as the pair set sail from Gravesend on the Wellington. They arrived in New Zealand in 1853 where they spent six months.

His diaries record not only his missionary work but also the colonial social and economic life and the flora and fauna, all enriched by his own sketches.

The sketchbooks including small but densely drawn and detailed topographical, botanical and natural history subjects along with incidental sketches of his modes of travel, provide an extraordinarily rich visual record of early settlements and scenery in New Zealand.

The sketchbooks go under the hammer at Christie’s on September 21 along with a Charles Frederick Goldie painting of a Maori ‘chieftainess, Kapikapi, aged 102 years.
The signed Goldie, dated 1918, is in the original Charles Goldie frame and is expected to sell for stg15,000.

Christie’s said the Goldie, titled Weary with Years, Kapikapi, was brought from New Zealand by the present owner’s grandfather in 1919.

An 1891 Louis John Steele painting ‘Interior of a Maori house’ is tipped to fetch stg8000.Steele set up a studio in Auckland’s Shortland St and taught and painted Maori portraits and subjects. Charles Goldie was one of his pupils.

ENDS

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