Our Collection

The New Zealand Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection of works is growing as portraits are donated and sponsored.

As part of an ongoing project to share more about the works in our collection, our 2026 Museum and Heritage Practice intern, Abi Lapthorn, has selected a number of portraits to research and explore. We invite you to learn more about the stories, subjects, and artists behind these works by reading the articles below.

Susan Wilson, Witi Ihimaera, 2014. Oil on Linen. Collection of the New Zealand Portrait Gallery. Donated by Susan Wilson

Portrait of Witi Ihimaera painted at the Maritime Museum Oslo at the New Zealand Association Conference in 2014.

Witi Ihimaera (Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Rongowhakaata and Ngāti Porou) is a pioneering voice in Aotearoa New Zealand literature, vastly recognised as the first Maori author to have published in a western context both a short story, Pounamu Pounamu, 1972, and a novel, Tangi, 1973. Ihimaera is a singular voice, offering a perspective that is uniquely Māori. A celebration of the rural world he grew up in, the process of rural to urban migration showing Māori engaging in a Pākeha metropolitan worldview, and intergenerational language loss. Writing from a semi autobiographical lens as he returns time and time again to the setting of his childhood home of Waituhi, Gisborne. Writing about the people that he knows and a life that he loves very much.

The artist Susan Wilson is a New Zealand expatriate living and working in the UK. Before painting people, Wilson maintains that she needs to get to know her portrait subject. When it came to Ihimaera she felt she needed to read more of his work, “I cannot paint Witi without doing background reading, I have to know more about him” (Standing Room Only - RNZ, 2015). The conversations she has with her sitters and encourages them to have in her studio are vital to the outcome of the painting. Explaining that all of the dialogue goes into the work. To know people is to have their personal essence shine through in the piece. The same can be said as to why Ihimarea is always returning to Waituhi. To paint someone or to write about something so personally, is to reveal what you see. In this way their mediums complement each other in their pursuits to capture deeply human experiences that connect us through storytelling.

Self described, Wilson is not into painting flattering images and in turn the result she often finds is an appreciation for the honesty that becomes visible on the canvas. The style of portraiture is something that is so unmistakable in its bluntly candid technique, showing the humanity in Ihimarea’s face. Evident brush strokes and distinct colour changes muddle the lines of a realistic face, bordering on a more expressionist approach to portraiture.