Hidden treasure? New research puts $1.2m price tag on William Hodges’ Dusky Sound painting

Million-dollar view: The newly researched William Hodges painting up for auction at the International Art Centre next month. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

An “overlooked” painting based on sketches from James Cook’s second Pacific voyage is heading to auction with a top value of $1.2 million — almost 4000 per cent more than its present owner paid.

The image of a Māori man standing on rocks by a waterfall at Cascade Cove in Dusky Bay has been attributed to William Hodges, the artist on board the Resolution when it anchored in Fiordland 250 years ago.

Hodges was the official draughtsman for Cook’s 1772-75 voyage to the Pacific. On his return to England, he made oil paintings based on the drawings he had made on the journey, including several from his time in Tamatea Dusky Sound.

“It has to be one of the earliest paintings of New Zealand,” says Richard Thomson, director of the International Art Centre in Parnell, Auckland, where the work will be auctioned on July 25.

“It was thought to be, for a long time, a print. Now I’ve got lots of supporting information about it being an original painting.”

In 2013, the present owner — a Wellington-based private collector — paid just €17,300 ($30,634) for it at Germany’s Auktionhaus Stahl.

“It was incorrectly catalogued,” says Thomson. “They didn’t really know what they were selling.”

And now? “We have covered all bases. If anyone questions it, don’t bid on it.”

Richard Thomson, director of the International Art Centre in Parnell, where the William Hodges work will be auctioned next month. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

The work is referenced as a “polygraph” (sometimes referred to as a kind of mechanical painting) in an influential set of books on the art of Cook’s voyages, produced in the mid-1980s. Thomson believes that has led to a relatively low price tag over the years. But “the authors never saw the work in the flesh ... I’ve physically got it here. It’s an oil painting. It’s really just been overlooked”.

New expert advice had, he said, verified the work as an original: “We just wouldn’t put it up unless we were 100 per cent.”

A 2015 attempt to sell the work through Christie’s London (which gave it a top value of £100,000 ($206,000) was unsuccessful. The International Art Centre’s estimate for the work, titled A Māori before a waterfall in Dusky Bay, 1777, is between $800,000 and $1.2m.

“With all the research that’s been done since, it’s actually been quite a find,” says Thomson. “It’s quite a special painting, and how do you value something when it’s literally priceless?”

In material being issued to prospective buyers, three United Kingdom-based experts, including Geoff Quilley, a former maritime art curator and co-editor of a major Hodges publication, confirm their opinion the painting is an original Hodges work.

It is described as a “straight copy” or original replica (with no indication of etching or printing) of the identically sized A Maori before a Waterfall in Dusky Bay, now in the Southland Museum and Art Gallery. Another, much-larger oil painting of the same subject matter is in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, England.

Both Te Papa and Auckland Art Gallery already own paintings from Hodges’ Pacific voyage.

“Who would be the collector? Well it’s probably not going to be an institution. It’s more likely to be a private buyer,” says Thomson.

Close-up detail from A Māori before a waterfall in Dusky Bay, 1777, painted by William Hodges and estimated to be worth between $800,000 and $1.2m. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

In an auction catalogue essay by art historian David Maskill, the painting is described as a “rare and significant work of great historical importance ... marking the very beginnings of oil painting in New Zealand”.

Maskill says close comparison between this work and the one held in Southland reveal several significant differences, “which argue for our painting being a replica painted by Hodges and not a copy made by another artist”, including the whalebone or albatross feather ornament worn by the Māori figure. Meanwhile, he says the treatment of the cascading water and “delicately rendered” trees “is entirely consistent with Hodges’ technique”.

The Hodges painting will go under the hammer at the International Art Centre’s upcoming Important and Rare Art Auction. Other highlights include a Charles Goldie painting, Memories Tearara, A Chieftainess of the Arawa Tribe of Maoris, Rotorua, New Zealand, with a top estimate of $1.5m.