Charles F Goldie
Born in Auckland in 1870, Goldie attended Auckland Grammar school before undertaking further art training abroad. His father, David Goldie, was a prominent timber merchant and politician, and a strict Primitive Methodist who resigned as Mayor of Auckland rather than toast the visiting Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York with alcohol.
Goldie's work has been criticised as "racist", and certainly he held the Victorian attitudes he had grown up with - that the Māori were a "dying race" and in many ways inferior to Europeans. Despite some critics considering them "not art", on the rare occasions his paintings are offered for sale they fetch high prices - among the highest for New Zealand paintings. Many Goldie's are held in public collections, including the Auckland Art Gallery, the Auckland Institute and Museum, and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. There is an ongoing controversy about the reproduction of Goldie's paintings of Māori that are held in public collections as prints for commercial sale.
Goldie died in 1947 through a combination of lead poisoning and alcoholism.