Published 2005 by Tāhuhu Kōrero Toi Art History, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.
47 pages
190 x 150mm, softcover, with black and white illustrations
Edited by Christina Barton
ISSN 977-1176-58800-5

A Nation’s Portraits, by Roger Blackley, offers fascinating insights into a history of portraiture in New Zealand. Rather than restricting himself to an examination of elite portraits in national repositories, he explores a range of historical and contemporary venues, from the window displays of nineteenth-century photography studios to Henry Partridge’s Lindauer Art Gallery of Maori portraits on Auckland’s Queen Street, to the hallowed halls of Parliament and the busy corridors of his own university. His purpose here is to ask probing questions about the place of New Zealand’s rich heritage of official and unofficial portraits. As a result, Blackley has made a timely and relevant contribution to the historical task of examining art’s vital role in shaping the nation.

Roger Blackley is a leading historian of colonial art. He is the author of Goldie, published in 1997 on the occasion of Auckland Art Gallery’s major exhibition of Charles F. Goldie’s paintings. Currently Senior Lecturer in Art history at Victoria University of Wellington, he continues to research, teach, write on and curate aspects of colonial New Zealand art.