Goldie is best known for his highly finished portrayals of old-time M?ori complete with traditional tattoos and ornamented with taonga such as greenstone pendants. Although he painted these subjects throughout his career, he was at his peak in the early years of the 20th century when his most famous works were created. Mihipeka Wairama, signed and dated 1912, is an excellent example of his M?ori portraits of that period and is set off by its original frame.His sitter Mihipeka Wairama came from the Tuhourangi people who had been largely displaced from their ancestral home at Te Wairoa by the Tarawera eruption of 1886. The majority of the survivors were taken in at Whakarewarewa village where they re-established their lives and earned a living from the tourist trade. It would have been there that Goldie first met Mihipeka. In fact, in 1908 she was listed on the Eastern M?ori Electoral Roll as living at Whakarewarewa, Rotorua. She was one of a number of Tuhourangi identities who feature in Goldie’s paintings; others include Kapi Kapi whom he depicted on many occasions and once, aged 102, as a ‘survivor of the Tarawera eruption’. Undoubtedly the dramatic events of 1886 impacted on the tribe and gave a tragic dimension that allowed Goldie full scope for the reflective and stoic mood of his images. Mihipeka Wairama became one of his favourite models and is depicted in his famous No Koora te Cigaretti of 1912; this is the same year as the current work. Roughly translated as ‘No good the cigarettes’, it suggests that Mihipeka preferred something stronger in a briar pipe to the less-powerful cigarette Goldie showed her smoking. In both these paintings of Mihipeka, Goldie depicted only her head and shoulders; in both she wears the same blanket draped around her shoulders but it is left open to reveal her deep green dress and a neck scarf. In both, too, she wears the same pounamu ear-pendant; but whereas in No Koora te Cigaretti she is shown full-face, in the current example he depicts her in what is called ‘lost profile’, with just part of her far eye and cheek visible. Although a small work, less than life-sized, it has considerable impact because Goldie has silhouetted his sitter against a plain grey background and shown her close up. In the portrait, he displays the impeccable academic technique he learned in Paris at the Académie Julian in the 1890s. He has modelled the features and costume with careful gradations from light to dark to suggest form and texture. By sharpening the focus on the face and salient details like her moko, he draws us into the work. The effect of illusionism, of trompe l’oeil, is carried through to details like the pendant where the cast shadow makes the space between it and her neck tangible; also, we can seemingly trace the indentations of her moko with our fingers and feel the woolly softness of her blanket. While undoubtedly a portrait, Mihipeke Wairama is more than a record of the subject’s features. Goldie captures a mood of introspection and gives us some psychological insights into the sitter. Here the chiaroscuro he handles so well aids the effect by casting her eyes and brow into pools of shadow. By showing her gazing away from us, he gives a pensive, indeed melancholic feeling to his depiction. She is not thinking of the present but contemplating memories of those who have passed away and of times gone by, before the Tarawera eruption. This contributes a poignant dimension to the image and takes it beyond photographic reportage. Capturing mood and suggesting a narrative were central to much late-19th-century art, when Rembrandt was fashionable, and supply the essential ingredients of a good Goldie portrait.