Painted Histories: Early Maori Figurative Painting by NEICH, ROGER; Cliff Whiting, Foreword - 1993

Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland University Press, 1993. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/fine. Quarto. 7.5 x 11.75 in. xii, 330 pp. Illustrated with 175 black & white reproductions of artworks and photographs, finely detailed. Fine in original black paper-covered boards and fine pictorial dust jacket. Neich archives in theory and practise the figurative paintings of more than eighty meeting houses across New Zealand (especially in the east of the North Island), many of which have now disappeared. Figurative paintings circa 1840s distinguished themselves from the Maori traditions restricted to body painting and coating of timber with red ochre and abstract scroll patterns, known as kowhaiwhai.