An intimate and informal image of a young boy with child on his back, The Nest by Charles Frederick Goldie was painted in 1937 and is one of a number of double portraits that Goldie painted during his lifetime. Later double portraits include Ancestors and Descendants and I Wonder what he Wonders, which were both painted in 1939, as well as Te Rerehau Kahotea and Child from 1941, all of which are illustrated in Alister Tayler’s 1977 text on Goldie. With the exception of the last of the abovementioned paintings, each of these portraits features a woman with a young child on her back and with her eyes averted from the viewer. In The Nest, however, Goldie has chosen a subject that was at odds with social conventions of the time. While the older boy is oblivious to the spectator, the younger child returns the viewer’s gaze, thereby establishing a direct relationship. The composition of these portraits is typically sparse so that all attention is focused on the figures, who are, for the most part, characterised by a calm and tranquil air as though the artist is painting from memory a scene that was glimpsed earlier. In this manner, although Goldie routinely dressed and posed his sitters or painted from photographs, portraits such as the current one appear to capture a snapshot of life for Maori in the early 1900s.

A view that the Maori race was destined for extinction or for complete assimilation by the Pakeha informed Goldie’s often romantic treatment of his subjects. This sentimentally is markedly apparent in titles that the works were given and in the poses that the sitters were asked to assume. In The Nest the older boy is pictured with a pensive or slightly dejected expression and he is shown almost slumped onto the wooden railing. His gaze is into the middle distance and his demeanour indicates a certain apprehension about the future. Although simple, the composition of The Nest is masterfully constructed so that the carved wooden ledge bisects the picture plane on a diagonal, which animates the portrait while simultaneously performing a functional role as a supporting ledge. Goldie’s masterful eye for minutiae and his ability to accurately transcribe a variety of textures is apparent where each individual thread of the woman’s cloak and each grain of wood of the wooden railing is visible. Goldie’s infinitesimal brushwork and his attentiveness to a plethora of details produced paintings that preserve valuable information with regard to Maori ancestors and traditions and it is fitting that Goldie continues to be celebrated as one of New Zealand’s most pre-eminent painters of the colonial period.

Jemma Field