Northland Panels[1] is an eight-part landscape painted by the New Zealand artist Colin McCahon in November 1958 shortly after his first and only trip to the United States.
He was particularly impressed by large scale works by Richard Diebenkorn and Jackson Pollock and also saw Picasso's large-scale painting Guernica.
[3] On his return to New Zealand in July, McCahon at first found the close damp bush surrounding the family home in Titirangi to be oppressive but he then began to work outside on the deck of the house.
In 2014 a team of conservators at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki stabilised the eight panels[8] using an adhesive derived from a Japanese red algae called JunFunori.
The tūī (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae ) is a New Zealand blue, green and bronze bird with a white tuft of feathers at its neck and a very distinctive call.
In May 1978 the National Art Gallery finally agreed to purchase the work from McCahon's Wellington dealer Peter McLeavey for $25,000.
In the end, however, the painting was purchased through the Ellen Eames Collection fund assisted by the New Zealand Lottery Board.
This combined institution attempted an uneasy mix of both social history and art in its most contentious displays on opening in the exhibition Parade curated by Ian Wedde.
Here McCahon's Northland Panels was shown alongside a television set and a refrigerator based on the fact that all three were of the same era.