The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Lindauer, Gottfried
Lindauer, Gottfried, a well-known artist who has made Maori studies his specialty, was born at Pilsen, Bohemia, on Jan. 5th, 1839. Having early in life developed a taste for drawing, he was sent, at the age of seventeen, to Vienna as a resident student at the Academy of Artists, where he remained till 1865, studying in succession under Professor Joseph Freheich, Professor Kuppelwiesa, and Professor Rohl. After leaving the academy he was engaged for two years painting frescoes in the Cathedral churches of Austria. Then he went to Russia, where he remained two years, devoting himself exclusively to portrait-painting. Returning to Vienna in 1869, he painted some well-known public men, including Bishop Jieschek, of Budweis, in Bohemia. After a sojourn in that city of eighteen months, he went to Moravia for three years, and then migrated to New Zealand, arriving in the colony in May 1874. Devoting himself principally to Maori portraiture, he travelled through the colony and painted the prominent men and women of a generation now passing away. The series of life-size portraits of Maori chiefs and warriors exhibited by Sir Walter Buller at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, 1886, were all from his hand, who had made the "Maori at home" a subject of special study. After visiting his native land in 1886-87, he settled down at Woodville, near Wellington, having shortly before married Rebecca, the daughter of Benjamin Prance Petty.