Gateway of Maketu Pa

[Title from inscription on mount]. [Wanganui : C. H. Monkton, circa 1865]. Albumen print photograph of a watercolour sketch by Horatio Gordon Robley, carte de visite format, 103 x 63 mm (mount); verso with imprint of ‘London Photographic Company, C. H. Monkton, Manager’; both the albumen print and the mount are in very good condition; accompanied by a section cut from the carte’s original window mount inscribed in pencil in a fully contemporary hand ‘Gateway of Maketu Pa’.

Horatio Gordon Robley (1840-1930) was a soldier, artist, and collector. He arrived in New Zealand in 1863, and while stationed in the country drew an unprecedented number of sketches of Māori life. His book Moko; or Māori tattooing was his magnum opus. Robley also had a significant personal collection of mokomokai, or preserved Māori heads with moko design. When he returned to England in 1908 he offered to sell his collection of heads to the government of New Zealand; they declined, and the collection eventually went to the American Museum of Natural History. In 1998 these human remains were repatriated to New Zealand.

For a scholarly (and entertaining) article on the notorious colonial New Zealand photographer, Charles Henry Monkton (1840-1890), see Keith Giles’ essay C. H. Monkton, victim or villain? (http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/dbtw-wpd%5Cphotographers%5Cessays%5Cchmonkton.pdf)