The Art of Colonisation by Paul Moon

Art is well known for telling us a story, but what this book proves is that the story being told isn’t always the obvious one, or even the truthful one. There is always more to these pictures than we see at first glance.

This new book contains twenty-two works of art. They trace the depiction of New Zealand from its very earliest appearance, from Abel Tasman’s discovery and Cook’s voyages, right through to how we officially chose to celebrate the centenary of our founding. Through careful study and scholarship, Paul Moon attaches a well-researched history to these works. In many cases this history is at odds with the subject of the painting.

Examples of discrepancy include New Zealand scenes painted by an artist living in Sydney; later interpretations and narratives were added to scenes the artist did not witness, while a contemporary audience would see the picture as a true rendition of people or events. Not only was the way the country or Māori were represented distorted, but even the families coming to live in New Zealand tried to recreate their own heritage by distorting their origins.

Reading this book will certainly make you ask questions about other works of art. Who did the painting and why, but also who was paying for the work, and what narrative did they wish to show? What else might have been at stake?

Each short chapter begins with a work of art, and I was expecting many of these to be familiar. In fact, there were only six of the twenty-two that I had seen before. I have several books about the history of New Zealand art and the country's early history, such as the richly illustrated “Painting the Frontier,” which includes 170 drawings, prints, paintings, and photographs, but only two of them overlap with this book. I was surprised and delighted to find so many unfamiliar works in this book.

Let me start by saying something about the first few pictures in the book, by way of introduction to the whole.

We start with an image which predates the whole of colonisation, but which encompasses the idea of it. The Ulm Ptolemy from 1482 is a map based in the writings of Claudius Ptolemy in 150AD. After that time, various maps based on his descriptions were copied and reproduced, lost and redrawn. While Europe is well charted, Africa extends to the bottom of the map, sealing off the Indian Ocean into an enclosed sea. The interesting point about this particular map is how quickly it became obsolete – the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 and soon after Columbus found the New World. Both made the map obsolete, but the idea of a great southern continent pushed explorers to keep sailing south.

The second illustration is a view of Murderers Bay in 1643 on the back of Abel Tasman’s “discovery” of the country. It was at this point that the Dutch thought they had discovered the Great Southern Continent. The picture itself depicts an incident in which a small number of crew were rowing between the two Dutch ships and were set upon and killed by members of up to twenty Maori waka. The encounter and the shoreline are depicted, but then in the foreground, in a completely different scale, are the eleven crew of a waka with strangely enlarged and shaven heads. This first image of the people of New Zealand is the only one in existence for the next 125 years.

One picture is attributed to Tupaia, the Polynesian navigator who sailed with Captain Cook, and shows a Maori man exchanging a crayfish with Joseph Banks. It is a familiar image, but less familiar is some of the history that surrounded the man himself and his position amongst the crew of the Endeavour. Tupaia was not trusted to join the crew, but was championed by Banks and eventually accepted. His ability to learn English made his uniquely useful, but he would never be trusted as an equal. Evan Banks speculated that he might keep Tupaia “as a curiosity…as some of my neighbours do lions and tygers.” It is a great example of how this book tells the stories behind the pictures.

Paintings should not be taken at face value and Moon’s descriptions allow the true history to emerge. One of my favourite examples is a portrait called “Tippahee (Te Pahi), a chief of New Zealand” which dates from 1808. It is a watercolour from the State Library of New South Wales. It shows an imposing Maori chief, Te Pahi, who visited Sydney in 1805 and spent time with the Governor Philip King who described him as “5 feet 11 inches high, stout and extremely well made. His age appears to be 46 or 48. His face completely tattooed…” He obviously made a strong impression, one settler describing him as “a man of superior understanding” and was fascinated with ideas about wool-spinning and cloth production that he could take back to Northland.

The painting of Te Pahi was made by an English army officer who arrived three years after the visit and never met the man. The chief is being ridiculed by both his form of dress and stature, which do not match the description by the Governor. Without the research into the picture, we would never know just how much misinformation lurks behind a seemingly innocent portrait. We talk about fake news today, but it seems the same phenomenon has been around for at least the last two hundred years.

Paul Moon convinces us not to take paintings at face value. We should also let history speak. Art and colonisation developed a mutually sustaining relationship, with tastes and expectations of the viewing public mooring the artist to a general way of interpreting and representing the colonial world. We must never forget that the artists hoped to derive some income from their efforts. Equally, there was no point in travelling around the globe just to produce views they could create at home in the UK. There was a market for the unusual and the exotic, but there was also a need to make the new colony appeal to prospective migrants. All of these elements play in the mind of the artist. Professor Moon does a great job bringing a number of examples to our attention.

Reviewer: Marcus Hobson

Ugly Hill Press