Friday, March 15, 2013

Bishop Pompallier as we have not seen him before.......


This gorgeous big book from the enterprising Wellington indie publisher Steele Roberts brought a wide smile to my face.
I have long admired senior contemporary artist Piera McArthur for her wonderful bold use of colour and her zany sense of humour.
Here she is in her Introduction to her book, "The Holy Ghost Among the Fantails"


Introduction – "the darling Bishop"

Bishop Pompallier, the first Catholic bishop of Western Oceania, was born in 1801 into a prosperous family involved in the silk industry in Lyons, France. He belongs to an age of evangelising fervour bordering on fairy-tale, and the painter’s imagination has had free rein.

Tall, good-looking, courteous and well-informed, he cut a splendid six-foot-plus figure in his purple robes. Much to William Colenso’s rage Pompallier frequently appeared in ‘full canonicals’, a magnificent sight not lost on the impressionable Maori.

Relations between Pompallier and the Church Missionary Society and Wesleyan ministers (who had been in New Zealand since 1814) left much to be desired. Acrimonious exchanges were frequent — after all, not only was Pompallier a Catholic but he was French, almost as bad. The bogey of Napoleon was still rampant in the Anglo-Saxon mentality. Marsden had landed at Rangihoua in the Bay of Islands in 1814, only a year before Waterloo.

It was from my musings about the readjustments necessary for a deeply European person to live happily in New Zealand, even today, that came the idea of using the Bishop as the subject of a series of paintings — to be taken on any level from comic strip to profound — purple is his colour, regal his stance, touching his struggles (almost submerged as he was by difficulties administrative and financial) to cope with the wear and tear of life so far from home.

The Holy Ghost, however, is ever present, flitting among the branches of native trees, perching on the chandelier, facing up to the defensive kiwi. He is in the form of a dove and accompanies Pompallier in diverse situations. He is often recognisable by the initials H.G. glimmering in the paint.

Pompallier finally left New Zealand in 1868, returning to Paris, where he lived through the famous siege. Rats were eaten, food being scarce. He died in 1871 and was buried with a simple tombstone in the village of Puteaux.

Pa Henare Tait recently brought his remains back to New Zealand, where he now rests among his beloved Maori people in the Hokianga.

I wonder if in the still of night he misses France?

                                    Piera McArthur



Below are two pieces of art from the book. (Steele Roberts - Hardcover $99.99)


 And here she is in her studio



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