Portraits of the New Zealand Maori Painted in 1844 (Limited Facsimile of First Edition, Signed)

ANGAS, George French. Portraits of the New Zealand Maori Painted in 1844 by George French Angas. With a modern text by G. C. Petersen and S. M. Mead. Wellington: A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1972.

Imperial Folio. Half morocco and marbled paper boards. Top edge maroon. 49 colour plates throughout, each accompanied by descriptive text. Map showing Angas's itinerary through New Zealand. Facsimile edition. Limited edition of 750 numbered copies, this being number 604.

In July 1844, George French Angas (1822–1886) arrived in New Zealand and spent six months travelling on foot and by canoe through both islands, visiting Wellington, Porirua, the Marlborough Sounds, and Auckland before undertaking an arduous overland trek through the Waikato district, across to Kāwhia, and on to Lake Taupō. Travelling only four years after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and just seventy-five years after Cook's first landfall in New Zealand, Angas encountered Māori communities that had experienced comparatively little sustained European contact, and recorded what he saw with a scientific thoroughness and an artist's eye combined: costume and personal adornment, architecture, canoes, weapons, tools, ceremonial life, and the details of daily existence, all rendered with the same conviction that had driven his earlier work in South Australia.

On his return to England, Angas exhibited three hundred of his New Zealand and Australian watercolours at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly in 1846, and published a selection as The New Zealanders Illustrated, issued in ten parts between 1846 and 1847. Portraits of the New Zealand Maori, first published in this facsimile form in 1972, draws on a wider selection of Angas's original paintings than The New Zealanders Illustrated alone, presenting forty-nine plates accompanied by newly commissioned scholarly text: a preface by the historian G. C. Petersen advising on the historical context of the works, and a modern introduction on Māori material culture contributed by the distinguished Māori scholar Sir Hirini Moko Mead (S. M. Mead). The result is regarded as one of the most comprehensive and accurate surviving pictorial records of traditional Māori life before the full impact of European settlement.

Very good. A bit of wear to cover leather at hinges. Structurally sound, binding remains tight. Some occasional foxing throughout.

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Catalogue Number: HH000750