The 'taonga' of High Row

Only now, nearly 200 years later, is the full significance of the album becoming clear, of how Isaac presented it to his father as a going-away present.

Because, despite his Quaker background, Isaac’s business had collapsed into alcohol-fuelled debt and he was escaping his lost reputation by disappearing to the other side of the planet.

One of Isaac Coates' Maori portraits of a high ranking female

And there, in New Zealand, he was reborn as an artist, and now his portrait sketches are regarded by the Maori people as “taonga” – the most treasured possessions. Researchers Hilary and John Mitchell have pieced together Isaac’s story, and produced an amazing book showing the significance of his works and it, along with the leather-bound album, will be on display in a new exhibition in Darlington library that opens on Monday.

The Coates were a prosperous Quaker family from south Durham: their main home was Smelt House, near Howden-le-Wear, where they lived until the 1950s. Indeed, Isaac’s father and brother were directors of the Bishop Auckland & Weardale Railway which may explain why Howden-le-Wear was given its own station of Beechburn.

Isaac was born in Norton, where the Coates’ business interests included the corn mill.

His mother, Hannah (above, as sketched by Isaac), had an elder sister, Rachel, who was married to Edward “Father of the Railways” Pease, so absolutely impeccable connections when young Isaac set himself up as a printer and bookseller in Darlington in 1829.

His premises were at the south end of High Row, and as well as printing and bookbinding, he sold “polite literature” – certainly no trashy novels.

Isaac Coates' printers was where the Home & Colonial store was in this 1925 picture of High Row. Picture courtesy of Darlington Centre for Local Studies

He was one of the leading voices in Darlington advocating Parliamentary reform, and when south Durham was granted its first MP in 1832, he campaigned for his cousin Joseph Pease – the fellow on the statue in the centre of Darlington – to be elected. Indeed, in 1837, he was Joseph’s election secretary and was accused of buying a man’s vote for 7s 6d – a charge that was vigorously denied.

By then, the Peases were having concerns about Isaac. With his business in deep debt, he’d gone missing, but Edward Pease was relieved when he wrote in his diary that Isaac had “signed the renunciation of all cricket clubs…and a teetotal pledge”. Alcohol has been the downfall of many a man, but was there wickedness in cricket clubs, too?

A poster printed by Isaac on High Row in 1833. Picture courtesy of Darlington Centre for Local Studies

The pledges didn’t work. In 1840, the printing business was dissolved, and the Coates family paid off all debtors. For Quakers, who prided themselves on their integrity and sobriety, this must have been very embarrassing.

In September 1840, Isaac resigned from the Quakers; in November, he presented his father with the slim album of sketches of family members (below), including a self-portrait; in December, to heavy hearts all round, he sailed from Liverpool.

Isaac's self-portrait is in the slim volume

Isaac's portrait of his father, George

It must have been viewed as a journey to the other side of the world from which Isaac was unlikely to ever return.

In February 1842, the researchers discovered that Isaac had arrived in Nelson on the south island of New Zealand. It was a planned town, with plots of land being sold to Europeans who wished to make a new life down under.

However, most settlers had construction or agricultural skills. Isaac didn’t. He survived on a quarterly payment from his family in south Durham, and on his talents as an artist – in those pre-camera days, the fashion was for “shades”, or silhouettes, which were likenesses cut out of black paper.

Life in Nelson was far from easy. With his education and independent means, Isaac was highly regarded, but there were problems among the settlers who were establishing the town, and with the native Maoris, who felt land that had been theirs for centuries was being stolen. This resulted in the Wairau Affray of June 1843, in which the Maoris, led by Te Rauparaha (below, sketeched by Isaac), killed 22 settlers.

The Europeans portrayed the natives as bloodthirsty savages but the truth is probably that the Maoris were defending their land and their way of life.

Perhaps because of this violent uncertainty, Isaac, now 36, left Nelson in 1845 with his new 18-year-old Irish wife, Margaret. They settled in Adelaide in Australia, where he tried to make a living with his “shades” and where Margaret gave birth to a daughter, Sarah.

The only "shade", or silhouette, in the Darlington album of Isaac Coates's work. It shows Rachel Pease, Isaac's cousin who was the wife of Edward Pease

Then, tragedy.

On March 17, 1848, 15-month-old Sarah died of scarlet fever. Two weeks later Margaret succumbed to tuberculosis.

The shock sent Isaac off the rails. Local newspapers tell of scrapes caused because his “state of mind was aggravated by drink”.

Then in 1852, the researchers discovered he had made it to the newly opened Mount Alexander goldfields in Victoria. He’d joined the goldrush!

And he struck gold. On September 3, 1852, he deposited 56 ounces of it in a bank in Melbourne. It was then worth $1,157 which today would be worth £30,000 – a useful sum.

Although he had his expenses: in 1855, he was fined 20 shillings (or jail for 24 hours) for being drunk.

Then his trail once again goes cold until the researchers found him, almost miraculously, on the 1861 census back in south Durham, where he was living at Smelt House with his brother, George, their sisters and various dependents.

Smelt House, near Howden-le-Wear, was rebuilt by Isaac's brother, George, in 1847. The Coates family lived there for 300 years until the 1950s. It is now known as Fir Tree House

After 20 years, Isaac had made it home from the other side of the world, and he was now described as a thoroughly respectable-sounding “retired iron merchant”. Perhaps in the goldfields he had found enough to buy himself a return passage and retire comfortably.

The only known photograph of Isaac Coates, which was taken around 1870 when he was back living in County Durham. Courtesy of the Durham County Record Office. Accession No. D/Wa 2/6/1

The 1871 census found him boarding with the Stanhope stationmaster in Weardale, and then in 1872, the researchers found that he married Ann Heath at Bitterne, near Southampton. How this connection was made, no one knows, but Isaac died in Bitterne, aged 70, in 1878.

But, back in New Zealand, he had left 58 portraits of Maori people whom he had encountered in the early 1840s in Nelson. Perhaps, before the Wairau Affray, he had taken the opportunity to paint them when they were negotiating with the settlers.

The sketches show men and women, young and old, and all strands of tribal life, from the leader Te Rauparaha and his wife, Kutia, down to a slave. Isaac’s eye is good enough to capture the ta moko – the facial tattoos – and the hair, the clothing and the shark-tooth earrings of his subjects.

Hilary and John Mitchell's new book about Isaac Coates, which has been published in New Zealand

“At a time prior to photography and at a point of considerable cultural transition and transformation, we are lucky to have these images by Coates who, with a sensitive eye and his pencil and brush, has rendered such a wide range and variety of personalities,” says Julie Catchpole, director of the art gallery in Nelson.

Authors Hilary and John Mitchell visited Darlington and Durham a decade ago as they pieced together Isaac’s story, which they have now published in a 366-page book, He ringatoi o nga tupuna: Isaac Coates and his Maori Portraits. It contains the Maori sketches.

They conclude by saying: “The images are regarded by Maori as taonga. They are cherished, not only by direct descendants but by the subjects’ tribal organisations, whose office walls are adorned with Coates portraits. They remind the current iwi (tribe) members of those who risked life and limb to escape oppression and danger in the north, and fought to re-establish their iwi, hapu (clan) and whanau (family).”

As well as the Maori sketches, there’s the slim album in Darlington library which Isaac presented to his father as he departed Durham having tarnished his own family’s reputation.

The album is at the centre of the exhibition which opens on Monday in the local studies centre. It runs Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm, until October 29.