Auckland Art Gallery Visitor’s Book

Gauguin visited Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and the Auckland Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira in August 1895.

In Kihara’s Vārchive, she includes a page from Auckland Art Gallery’s visitor book that shows us Gauguin’s signature, confirming his visit.

It was here where he recorded and made detailed sketches of Māori treasures and took a small but vital collection of new images, several of which later appeared in his major paintings. Kihara suspects that it was in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland that Gauguin picked up several photographs of Sāmoa taken by Aotearoa New Zealand colonial photographers, including Thomas Andrew, whose photographs were circulated across Aotearoa at the time.