Born in Auckland the son of a timber merchant, Goldie was educated at Auckland Grammar School and by 1885 had begun to win certificates and prizes at Auckland Society of Arts exhibitions and others. He studied with Louis John Steele and is also said to have taken lessons from Robert Atkinson during his six year period of residence in New Zealand. In 1892 Goldie went to Paris where he studied at the Academie Julien under Bouguereau, Constant, Ferrier and Baschet; he also studied portraiture in London with Sir James Guthrie. He visited and copied works in many European galleries. In 1898 he returned to New Zealand, setting up an Auckland studio called The French Academy of Art with L.J. Steele and collaborating with him on a large work, The Arrival of the Maori in New Zealand, based on Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa. After the partnership with Steele broke up in 1902 Goldie took pupils and taught at Remuera Ladies' College. In 1901 Goldie made the first of many trips to Rotorua where he used to take photographs and sketch Maori subjects. By 1920 the market for his Maori subjects was in decline so Goldie set off for France via Sydney, where he married and remained painting copies of his earlier Maori portraits. Here he became ill, probably as the result of lead poisoning, and by early 1923 had returned to Auckland where he did little painting. The governor-general Lord Bledisloe encouraged him to begin working again and in 1934-35 he exhibited at the Royal Academy, London and at the Paris Salon. His mental and physical health were severely undermined and he died at his home in Mt Eden. Like Gottfried Lindauer, Goldie made his reputation with paintings of Maori. His paintings reflect the belief, commonly held at the turn of the century, that the Maori was a vanishing race. Goldie gave monumentalised pictorial expression to this notion, carefully recording precise moko details and facial expressions but embuing his subjects with an all-pervading melancholy as if each subject was mourning the inevitable decline of the race. Critical objection to Goldie's paintings centres on this perceived misrepresentation which reduced individuals to what has been described as a crude stereotype. Others argue for Goldie's painterly ability to convey the physiognomic accuracy of his individual subjects. Ahinata Te Rangituatini, also known as Kapi Kapi, of Rotorua (c.1800-1902) was one of Goldie's favourite sitters and he painted her 22 times. She was an Arawa chieftainess , as Goldie titled another portrait of her. A member of the Tuhourangi tribe living at Whakarewarewa, she was the sister of the Arawa chief Haerehuka. Kapi Kapi survived the Tarawera Eruption and witnessed the assault of Pukeroa Pa at Ohinemutu. On her shoulders were scars of wounds self-inflicted with pieces of obsidian as a sign of mourning. Goldie was interested to note that she was the only woman he had ever seen with a tattooed spiral on the nostrils. She died at the age of 102 after falling into a hot pool, it is said deliberately as was the custom among some of the old Maori in the past.