Harbour Study, Auckland, c. 1910. Oil on board. 45 × 60 cm.
Lot 006 · Paintings
Harbour Study, Auckland
Charles Goldie (attributed)
Year
c. 1910
Medium
Oil on board
Dimensions
45 × 60 cm
Estimate
On request
A luminous study of the Waitematā Harbour at low tide, the composition divided between a broad expanse of water and a sky of remarkable subtlety. The paint is applied with the directness and economy characteristic of Goldie's sketching practice — wet-into-wet in the sky, more deliberate in the foreground where the tidal flats are rendered with careful attention to the quality of reflected light. The work has not been publicly exhibited and was unknown to scholars until it appeared in the estate of a prominent Auckland family in 2019.
Artist
Charles Goldie (attributed)
Charles Frederick Goldie (1870–1947) is the most celebrated New Zealand painter of the colonial era, known internationally for his portraits of Māori elders. Less well known is his early landscape work, produced before he committed fully to portraiture around 1905. These harbour studies — small, rapidly executed oils on board — were made during sketching excursions around the Waitematā Harbour and were rarely exhibited in his lifetime. The attribution of the present work is supported by comparison with signed examples in the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and by a label on the reverse in a hand consistent with Goldie's known inscriptions.