Goldie painted Kamaka Te Matehaere on several occasions. After the 1900s the diminishing number of Maori with facial moko led the artist to produce many portraits of the same subjects, with variations of title and pose. A work exhibited at the Auckland Society of Arts in 1918 was called "The Whitening of the Snows of Venerable Eld" Kamaka An Chieftain of the Maniapoto Tribe (Aged 90 Years) – its title taken from Canto II of James Thomson's poem The Castle of Indolence 1748. Two other portraits of him in the Auckland Art Gallery's 1997 exhibition Goldie, were titled An "Aristocrat, Te Kamaka aged 90 years 1921 and The Diplomatist 1918. This work of Kamaka Te Matehaere carries the ingredients of Goldie's portraiture at its finest: an elderly, grey-haired Maori sitter, glazed eyes, reflective; with cloak, feathers, tiki, moko – all the characteristic accoutrements. The detail too is typical of Goldie's finest work: the glint of light, and colour, on the forehead above the left eyebrow – the texture of creased skin, and the dark veins coursing up towards the hairline. For many, this ‘realism’ is the essence of Goldie's work. Yet ‘realism’ is never straightforward. Goldie studied at the Académie Julian in Paris. One of his teachers was William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), who, like many French academic painters, was a consummate technician, capable of creating an almost photographic image. That, however, was not his main goal. At the annual Salon, pride of place went to historical and mythological subjects, grand narratives. Illusion, detail, modelling of skin and drapery – all this was designed to make the unreal look real, believable and compelling. Paintings were to elevate the mind beyond transient, everyday matters, to more fundamental and ennobling ideals, morals, human attributes. Even when Bouguereau painted everyday scenes, his prettified peasant girls generate a mythology of morals and sentiment far beyond the realities of life for the working classes. When Goldie returned to Auckland after more than four years of academic training, he embarked on an ambitious history painting, The Arrival of the Maori in New Zealand (1898), in collaboration with Louis John Steele. Although it was well received, Goldie did not pursue history painting, instead developing his own speciality – portraits of Maori. Like Bouguereau’s peasants, they do not amount to accurate or representative records of individuals. Goldie paid his sitters, dressing them up in ‘traditional’ garments he kept in his studio, and sold his paintings to wealthy Pakeha, who may have seen them, as Goldie intended, as symbolic mementos of a supposedly ‘dying race’. For Goldie, the ‘art’ of his portraiture was as much the implicit narrative he built around his sitters, as it was the technical accomplishment. When it turned out that in fact Maori were not a ‘dying race’, the mythology of his portraits exposed, his reputation as an artist rested only on craft (technique) rather than ‘art’. However, one aspect of Goldie’s ‘realism’ has not been questioned: the unique record the paintings provide of t? moko. Moreover, it now seems problematic to endorse the ‘dying race’ interpretation. Perhaps Goldie’s reflective elders are more hopeful, waiting for something other than death. Karamaka Te Matahaere is waiting for Goldie to finish painting his portrait, certainly. But perhaps he is waiting for, even reflecting upon, some form of renaissance. He is, after all, spanning time, or timeless. Edward Hanfling