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Tuesday, 15 - Tuesday, 22 September 2020
Helen Stuart (c.1848-1923) hand coloured portrait photograph
Current Bid $340 (38 bids, reserve met)
This lot is now closed 22 Sep 6:30 PM (NZST)
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Lot Details
signed, inscribed verso 'Painted in Watercolour by Helen Stuart. New Zealand's best watercolour artist, Price, 4 Guineas. Year 1886. Unframed, 150 x 100. Est. $100-200. An excerpt from the New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7706, 3 August 1886 reads: " Colonial and Indian Exhibition, London 1886 ... There is a series of Maori portraits, apparently coloured photographs, by Miss Helen Stuart, of Auckland, which deserve special mention, for the great artistic excellence of their execution. Manga (Rewi), Te Kawau, and several other chiefs and notable Maori women are represented in native costumes, the patterns and tints of which are most carefully and beautifully worked out, while the painting of the features, the tattoo marks, and the perfect expression of the eyes, are most delicately and effectively portrayed. This style of art, if carried out in the same faultless way as these exhibits, would do much to rescue interesting Maori types from oblivion..."
