Winter, 1890. The Hot Lakes district expects few visitors but today the Oxford coach carries eight.
Judge Richmond of Wellington is in Rotorua to take a course of baths; Carl Kahler is an artist who is sketching at Whakarewarewa. The artist doesn’t know it, but one day, his portrait of 42 angora cats will sell for $1.3m - and his oil rendition of the lost White Terraces will be the subject of government briefing papers.
In 1890, Kahler is short and young and, the newspapers say, “a thorough German”. He smokes violently and tries hard not to laugh at the art scene in Auckland: “I have got so accustomed to looking at bad pictures, it does not hurt me anymore. But at first - Mein Gott!”
It is Kahler’s second visit to New Zealand. Two years earlier, the Austrian-born artist made an oil painting of the terraces at Rotomahana. It measures almost two metres by three metres and now, he claims modestly, hangs in Paris. He had intended to paint it bigger, but could not procure a canvas of such dimensions in this far flung colony.
The critics love him! (“Kahler is not only a genius, but an even greater rarity, an artist not overweeningly vain” - Observer, Nov 8, 1989). The critics hate him! (“It is no work of art” - Southland Times, July 31, 1975). They compare him unfavourably to the local painter Charles Blomfield suggesting Kahler is handicapped because his work must be based on photographs and descriptions. Mt Tarawera erupted in 1886. There is a Kahler in the shipping records of 1885, 1887 and 1890 but no way of knowing if they are the same man.
He is the master of self-promotion. He hangs photographs of his studio in shopfronts. Advertisements credit him with “the largest painting ever executed” of the wonder that is the White Terraces. Perhaps, muse the daily scribes, Kahler will make New Zealand a popular winter resort for English and French fashionables (”Egypt is ‘the thing’ now, but it’s glories are on the wane . . . “)
Who was Carl Kahler? How many versions of the Pink and White Terraces did he paint? And how did one of them become the subject of a Department of Conservation (DoC) ministerial briefing paper recently released to the Weekend Herald?
Today, Kahler is most famous for an oil portrait of 42 angora cats, last sold in 2015 for $1.3m at Sothebys, New York. But since at least 1977, his depiction of the lost White Terraces has hung at the Chateau Tongariro, the hotel and resort that was built in 1929 and abruptly shut down last March by leaseholders who handed the property to DoC, citing concerns about seismic risks.
The future of the Chateau is still uncertain. Recently released documents show DoC is dealing with more than structural headaches. A March 28 briefing paper to Minister of Conservation Willow-Jean Prime, states “there are significant risks to be managed, including legal, reputational, financial, and health and safety”.
The paper requests Ministerial direction on the heritage chattels that have been owned by KAH New Zealand (KNZ) since 1991, when it purchased the Chateau from the Crown-owned Tourist Hotel Corporation and began operating it under a lease granted by DoC. When that lease expired in 2020, KNZ moved to a monthly agreement with a 30-day termination clause that it invoked earlier this year.
“KNZ have left the hotel chattels, including furniture, bedding, appliances, and artwork in the Chateau,” says the briefing paper. “We have advised we are not taking responsibility for any loss or damage to these items while they remain.”
Among those chattels is Carl Kahler’s enormous, gilt-framed painting of Te Tarata, the White Terraces buried in the 1886 volcanic eruption of Mt Tarawera.
Consultation with the Ministry of Culture and Heritage and national museum Te Papa Tongarewa had concluded the Kahler painting was the Chateau’s only item of significant heritage value.
“We would require a valuation to understand the likely value of this painting. The highest price reached for a Kahler to date that we are aware of is US$826,000 in 2015. To keep the Kahler painting with the Chateau, the Crown would need to consider purchasing.”
DoC advised against buying (“this would potentially be of significant cost”) and recommended the minister instruct it to work with the painting’s owner to sell it to a New Zealand museum.
What is the painting worth? Is it still at the Chateau? Will a public art gallery or museum buy it?
“The art and heritage chattels which were in the Chateau Tongariro are not owned by the Department of Conservation and therefore we have no comment to make on this matter,” said Mike Tully, deputy director-general organisation support.
From Singapore, Kevin Peeris, senior vice-president commercial for the Chateau’s parent company, Bayview International, said, “Unfortunately, we are unable to comment at this time due to ongoing negotiations with the Department of Conversation”.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Te Papa has confirmed it won’t be buying.
Internal DoC emails show the national museum was approached to store the artwork, but declined citing space issues.
“Given the subject matter, the painting is of historical interest,” Kate Camp, Te Papa’s head of marketing and communications, said this week.
But: “Te Papa is not pursuing purchase of the work, we are not in discussion with anyone about its purchase, and we have not sought a valuation.
“When considering purchase of artworks we ask ourselves a number of questions, including does it align with our acquisition strategy? Are we already well represented in this area? Is it a current priority for collecting? Can we store and care for it in perpetuity?
“We have very limited storage capacity available for large paintings and this was a factor in the decision.”
DoC’s records do not show exactly how the painting came to be at the Chateau, but it surmises it was purchased by the THC in the 1970s. This week, with the assistance of research librarians at Auckland Art Gallery and Invercargill Public Library, National Library’s historic PapersPast collection and Californian newspaper databases, the Weekend Herald tracked down potential clues to its provenance - and the curious life of its creator.
“Have you ever been to the Chateau?” asks Ben Plumbly, from Auckland auction house Art+Object. “There are effectively two views. One is the large window straight out to Mt Ngauruhoe. The other is, basically, that painting.”
Longer than a two-seater couch and taller than a person, the artwork is “magnetic”, says Plumbly.
“You could be in Europe, some castle in Bohemia . . . it’s almost garish and it sort of glows slightly unnaturally . . . it has that internal sheen.
“I would argue it is of national significance, because of history and connection to what is one of New Zealand’s most iconic bits of architecture.”
Estimating its value would be “utter guesswork” - but Plumbly was prepared to go as high as $250,000.
“We often say, and it’s a complete and utter cliche, that a painting is worth as much as what someone is prepared to pay for it. And there is no precedent really, for this type of work appearing on the market.
“But if you compare it to, say, a [Charles] Blomfield of which there are literally hundreds, it is irreplaceable. There is not another painting around like it. If you pushed me to come up with a number, and I stress this is just my opinion, I would have thought in the vicinity of $250,000.”
Carl Kahler did like to get a good price for his work. In 1863, the San Francisco Call reported he was the most productive of any local artist “and he very much preferred consigning one of his gems to some dark corner rather than part with it for less than he considered it worth”.
Kahler sailed to San Francisco from Auckland, via Melbourne. A prize-winning student in Munich, Paris and Italy, he had spent the previous five years based in Australia, where he is famous for three large canvases of the Melbourne Cup, rendering recognisable portraits of that city’s ladies and gentlemen gathered around the grandstand.
His Elizabeth St studio was stuffed with Venetian lamps, Dresden china, 15th-century ecclesiastical robes, peacock feathers and gilt frames. It reminded visitors “of the reception room of some famous painter in Paris or Rome” and was described as a haunt for the cultured folk of Melbourne; a place where the artist “received with true Continental grace and courtesy”.
There is no denying Kahler could paint, says Plumbly, “regardless of how he made his living, or his central strand of works”.
Plumbly is talking about the cats. Google “Kahler” and they appear in their hundreds. In 1892, when the artist wrote to friends in Auckland he reported that he’d recently painted the famed French actress Sarah Bernhardt in her role as Cleopatra and was now “engaged in a very interesting subject - Angora Cats at Play”.
Kate Birdsall Johnson was a millionaire cat owner who reportedly housed 350 felines at her summer residence near Sonoma, California. One day, she invited Kahler to the cat ranch - the rest is art history.
Sotheby’s auction notes record: “Kahler had never painted a cat before . . . for the next three years, he sketched her cats in a variety of poses”. The piece de resistance was a painting called My Wife’s Lovers, “a title supposedly assigned by Mrs Johnson’s husband”. It would be labelled one of the finest cat pictures in the world and in 2015, when it last went to auction, that final bid was more than twice its top estimate.
Plumbly says that US$826,000 is an anomaly. The next most profitable Kahler sales are US$79,500 (achieved in 1994) and US$18,750 (2019).
And the painting that hangs at the Chateau Tongariro?
In May 1975, a Carl Kahler painting titled White Terraces, measuring 229cm by 176.5cm, was auctioned in Melbourne. It went for $400 and while there are no photographic records of the sale, three months later, an enormous Kahler appeared on the front page of the Southland Times. It had, reportedly, been purchased in Melbourne - and it is definitely the same painting that would go on to hang at the Chateau Tongariro for almost the next 50 years.
According to Invercargill art dealer John Potts, the painting was made in 1884 and, he claimed, was worth $8000 - or 1900 per cent more than he’d paid.
It had been “flown to Christchurch by jumbo jet” with the frame dismantled, before “the doors of the Southland Museum and Art Gallery were flung as wide open as possible, in an only just successful attempt to get the magnificent painting inside”.
The plan was to have it on show for a fortnight, before it went to auction at Wellington’s Dunbar Sloane. Invercargill came out in force. Almost 1500 people viewed the painting which, in its final days, was left lying on its side in a corner of the gallery, after the van it was supposed to head north in was damaged.
Southland Times, July 31, 1975: “Although people are still coming to see it, even if it means almost having to stand on their heads, there has been a feeling of disappointment . . .” According to Museum director Arthur Mackenzie, it lacked artistic merit. “People are most impressed by its size . . . it is no work of art.”
The auction was advertised in Christchurch’s Press newspaper. The “magnificent oil” would be sold alongside a William Hodges from Captain Cook’s second voyage, two Goldies, multiple Frances Hodgkins and many other big names. This week, a representative from Dunbar Sloane said limited archives from the 1970s existed, but nothing relating to that sale could be found.
In 1906, the San Francisco earthquake killed 3000 people, including the artist Carl Kahler. Perhaps.
Most official histories say he died in that terrible disaster. But, occasionally, there is a reference to him moving to New York. And then there is this, from an 1894 article on Kahler, in the San Francisco Call:
“He possessed a happy faculty of getting large sums of money from admirers, but then money went through his fingers like water from a sieve . . . ”
One year earlier, the Call reported, Kahler had locked his studio and left for the Chicago Exhibition. His best patron was still alive and “the immense canvas with 100 cats had sold for a good round sum”. His studio was full of clothes, walking canes and pictures but Kahler never returned - nor paid the rent. Letters had been mailed repeatedly; he was last heard from in Europe and now an agent had broken down the door and his paintings would soon be disposed of at auction.
Two new artists had settled in Kahler’s studio. They had found a use for his easels and expensive gold frames but “there are no champagne bottles in the corners as of old”.
>> An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to the wrong year of both the San Francisco earthquake and the Mt Tarawera eruption