The subject of this striking portrait is a man of Māori descent with traditional face tattoos (moko). Tattoos were a unique expression of status for both Māori men and women, wrapping the wearer in a layer of spirit power (mana) and creating a visible statement of genealogical claim in a society in which clan affiliation and descent was a matter of paramount importance.  The subject’s hair is held in a high top knot and is secured by a bone comb. He also wears an earring and a necklace, possibly carved from greenstone. We can imagine the mutual fascination between the subject and artist during this encounter - who we believe to be a British soldier in the Royal Engineers, Captain James Williams. Several papers on ‘subjects connected with the duties of the Corps’ of the Royal Engineers, dated from 1851 – 1853 are held by the Museum of New Zealand / Te Papa Tongarewa, in Wellington. On the reverse of the sheet there are various numbered drawings of artefacts that pertain to the Māori culture, that Captain Williams has recorded in his enthusiastic hand. Number 7 is a figurative sculpture of a female, likely representing a deity; 6 is the spear-like head of a Taiaha (a close-quarters staff weapon), known as an Ido; 5 could be a small adze/axe, known as a toki;3 appears to be a carved treasure box, known as a Wakahuia.

The present work follows the tradition of European explorers making drawings of the indigenous people they encountered in the Polynesian Islands, since the first voyage of Captain James Cook in 1769. In this ‘first contact’, Sydney Parkinson (1745 - 1771) produced the earliest detailed portraits of Māori by western artists, including chiefs with moko facial tattooing. His drawings were later engraved for Cook’s published journals and set the first European visual template of Māori. John Webber (1751–1793) was the official artist on Cook’s third voyage (1777). He created dramatic portraits such as “Poedua, Daughter of Orio, Chief of Raiatea” and drawings of Māori encountered in Queen Charlotte Sound. His works were widely engraved and carried an air of classical nobility, fitting the European taste for “noble savage” imagery. William Hodges (1744–1797), was the artist on Cook’s second voyage (1773–74). He painted landscapes and some Māori figures, though he was less ethnographically precise than Parkinson, he helped establish the romantic visual vocabulary of Māori and New Zealand for European audiences. In the 19th century, British traveller-artist Augustus Earle (1793–1838) arrived in New Zealand in 1827. He is known for making portraits such as “Portrait of Hongi Hika”, the Ngāpuhi rangatira, and capturing scenes of everyday Māori life. His works are among the first to capture Māori in their own environment with relative accuracy. Charles Heaphy (1820–1881) was an artist employed by the New Zealand Company in the 1840s. He created promotional watercolours depicting Māori and landscapes, blending ethnographic detail with an idealised colonial vision. His portraits of leaders like Te Rauparaha are historically significant. There was also George French Angas (1822–1886) and his book “The New Zealanders Illustrated” (1847), today considered a landmark publication. It contained vibrant lithographs of Māori rangatira and cultural practices, including portraits of Tamati Waka Nene and Te Heuheu Tūkino II. Angas’s work became some of the most widely circulated imagery of Māori in the Victorian era and it is possible that our Captain Williams was aware of it. In the late 19th Century, there were more concerted attempts to produce formal portraiture of Maori subjects and create something of an ethnographic record. Gottfried Lindauer (1839–1926) was a bohemian-born painter who emigrated to New Zealand. He produced a celebrated series of oil portraits of Māori chiefs and elders in the 1870s–90s. His portraits of figures such as Wiremu Tamihana, Te Hapuku, and Rewi Manga Maniapoto are iconic records of Māori leadership in the post-Treaty period. Many of these are preserved in the Auckland Art Gallery’s ‘Partridge Collection’. Moving into the 20th century, C.F. Goldie (1870–1947) created hyper-realistic portraits of elderly Māori with moko — such as “Darby and Joan” — became among the most famous Māori images ever painted. Goldie’s work reinforced a colonial narrative of a “vanishing race,” yet today his portraits are valued as meticulous records of individuals.