significant too is the fact that in many Maori people's eyes these people and their material accoutrements not to mention this picture itself, all constitute highly valued taonga tuku iho (lasting heirlooms) for gaze and wonderment of present and future generations. JD Joseph Jenner Merrett 1816-1854 A group of Maori maidens c.1845 WATERCOLOUR The Fletcher Trust Collection Merrett is believed to have paid visits from Sydney to the Bay of Islands in the late 1830s. Later he went to Auckland where he sought work as a surveyor, and then as a portrait and landscape painter, enjoying the patronage of Sir George Grey for a time. He also lived at New Plymouth in 1851 and at Whanganui the following year. He died in Wellington. A contemporary described him as "a sort of broken-down gentleman who used to do a bit of watercolour drawing but who was never looked upon as an artist." Writing of Merrett's specialty, pictures like these two featuring groups of Maoris, Len Bell described the figures as being more like "figurines". They are "often draped langorously against one another, are doll-like, with stereotyped, sweet and harmless expressions. They are little more than decorative knick-knacks - naively charming, but unrelated to the social and psychological realities of Maori life in the 1840s." PS