Six Goldie paintings, hidden for nine years, fetch $4.55m at auction
Six artworks by renowned Kiwi painter Charles Frederick Goldie have fetched a collective $4.55 million at auction.
Te Aho-o-te-Rangi Wharepu, A Noted Waikato Warrior, was the most expensive piece of the night sold at Ponsonby’s Art and Object yesterday, bought for $1.7m.
The painting is one of the most expensive Goldies ever sold. The highest-ever selling Goldie paintings both fetched $1.8m – one at a Sydney auction in 2023, and another at an Auckland auction in 2022.
The lowest-selling piece of the night was Day Dreams, Nataria Rangimangeo Mitchell (nee Haupapa) – Te Arawa Tribe, which was sold for $400,000.
Purchases include a $121,821 invoice accounting for a 19% buyer’s premium and GST.
The portraits depict Rarawa chief Atama Paparangi, Te Arawa’s Nataria Rangimangeo Mitchell, Ngāti Mahuta warrior Te Aho-o-te-Rangi Wharepu, Ngāpuhi chief Kamariera Te Hau-Takiri Wharepapa, Ngāti Maruwarrior chieftain Hōri Pōkai, and Hera Puna, widow of Ngāti Pāoa chief Hōri Ngākapa.
One of the paintings sold, A Midsummer’s Day, Maoriland: Pōkai – A Warrior Chieftain of the Ngāti Maru Tribe, had previously been exhibited by France’s famous salon of the Société des Artistes Français in the 1930s.
The portrait of Hōri Pōkai, a frequent subject of Goldie’s work, sold to an online bidder for $750,000.
There are no restrictions on who can buy the artworks, and given that the auction is online anyone in the world can bid on them. But the Protected Objects Act 1975 subjects items of national significance to an export licence, which can be withheld for reasons of cultural protection.
The collection was acquired between 2005 and 2013 by the late Christchurch pilanthropist Neil “Grumpy” Graham, co-founder of trucking giant Mainfreight, who died in 2015. The collection was inherited by Graham’s children Dean, Greg and Tania, but without a safe place to the display the works, the paintings have sat in storage since his death.
Dean, 58, told The Press giving up the collection had “nothing to do with money for us, because we don’t need the money. Paying it forward is important to me,” he said.