October 29, 2014
Goldie paintings fetch almost $1m
A 1938 painting by Charles Frederick Goldie of a Ngati Manawa elder, Wharekauri Tahuna, sold for $416,000 at an auction in Auckland last night.
It was one of three Goldies put up at the International Art Centre, with two portraits of Kapi Kapi, No Koora te Cigaretti and The Weariness of the Aged going for $257,000 and $205,000 respectively.
Auction house director Richard Thomson says the paintings were of exceptional quality and condition.
Te Wharekauri was one of the last tattooed men of his generation.
When young, he was captured by a Te Arawa war party and taken to Rotorua, where he continued to live after his release.
The painting, titled Thoughts of a Tohunga, was exhibited at the London Royal Academy of Arts in the late 1930s and Paris Salon to great acclaim.
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