Rita Angus (12 March 1908 – 25 January 1970), a
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
painter, has a reputation - along with
Colin McCahon
Colin John McCahon (; 1August 191927May 1987) was a prominent New Zealand artist whose work over 45 years consisted of various styles, including landscape, figuration, abstraction, and the overlay of painted text. Along with Toss Woollaston an ...
and
Toss Woollaston
Sir Mountford Tosswill "Toss" Woollaston (11 April 1910 – 30 August 1998) was a New Zealand artist. He is regarded as one of the most important New Zealand painters of the 20th century.
Life
Born in Toko, Taranaki in 1910, Woollaston attended ...
- as one of the leading figures in twentieth-century
New Zealand art
New Zealand art consists of the visual and plastic arts (including woodwork, textiles, and ceramics) originating from New Zealand and comes from different traditions: indigenous Māori art, that of the early European (or Pākehā) settlers, an ...
. She worked primarily in
oil
An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...
and
water colour, and became well known for her
portrait
A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this r ...
s and
landscapes.
[
]
Biography
Henrietta Catherine Angus was born on 12 March 1908 in
Hastings
Hastings () is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England,
east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west ...
, the eldest of seven children of William McKenzie Angus and Ethel Violet Crabtree.
[Rita Angus at Artdeco.org](_blank)
In 1921, her family moved to
Palmerston North
Palmerston North (; mi, Te Papa-i-Oea, known colloquially as Palmy) is a city in the North Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Manawatū-Whanganui region. Located in the eastern Manawatu Plains, the city is near the north bank of the ...
and she attended
Palmerston North Girls' High School
Palmerston North Girls' High School is a secondary school for girls, located in the suburb of West End in the city of Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Location
The main entrance of the school is located on Fitzherbert Avenue, near the Victoria ...
(1922–26). In 1927, she began studying at the
Canterbury College School of Art
The Ilam School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury was founded in 1882 as the Canterbury College School of Art. The school became a full department of the university in the 1950s, and was the first department to move to the suburban Ilam ...
. She never completed her diploma in fine arts but continued to study until 1933, including classes at the
Elam School of Fine Arts
The Elam School of Fine Arts, founded by John Edward Elam, is part of the Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries at the University of Auckland. Students study degrees in fine art with an emphasis on a multidisciplinary approach. The schoo ...
in
Auckland
Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about ...
.
During her studies she was introduced to renaissance and medieval art and received traditional training in life drawing, still life and landscape painting.
Angus married Alfred Cook, a fellow artist, on 13 June 1930, but they separated in 1934, and divorced in 1939.
Angus signed many of her paintings as ''Rita Cook'' between 1930 and 1946,
but after she discovered in 1941 that Alfred Cook had remarried, she changed her surname by
deed poll to McKenzie, her paternal grandmother's surname. As a result, some of her paintings are also signed ''R. Mackenzie'' or ''R. McKenzie'', but the majority are signed ''Rita Angus''.
After a short period teaching art in
Napier, Angus lived mostly in
Christchurch
Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon Rive ...
during the 1930s and 1940s.
In a difficult financial position after her divorce she took on different jobs including teaching and as an illustrator for the ''
Press
Press may refer to:
Media
* Print media or news media, commonly called "the press"
* Printing press, commonly called "the press"
* Press (newspaper), a list of newspapers
* Press TV, an Iranian television network
People
* Press (surname), a fam ...
.''
In the late 1940s she suffered from
mental illness and entered
Sunnyside Mental Hospital in 1949.
In 1950 she moved to
Waikanae
Waikanae (, ) is a town on the Kapiti Coast, 60 kilometres north of the Wellington CBD. The name is a Māori word meaning "waters" (''wai'') "of the grey mullet".
The town lies between Paraparaumu, eight kilometres to the southwest, and Ōt ...
to convalesce, and then settled in
Wellington
Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by metr ...
in 1955.
In the early 1940s, Rita Angus had an affair with composer
Douglas Lilburn
Douglas Gordon Lilburn (2 November 19156 June 2001) was a New Zealand composer.
Early life
Lilburn was born in Whanganui and spent his early years on the family sheep farm in the upper Turakina River valley at Drysdale. He attended Waitaki ...
, whom she met in 1941; she became pregnant but miscarried. The affair as such was short, but the connection remained, with Lilburn in attendance when she died in 1970. The affair between the two only became known after letters were discovered in 2002.
Death
From December 1969, Angus' condition rapidly deteriorated; she died in
Wellington Hospital of
ovarian cancer
Ovarian cancer is a cancerous tumor of an ovary. It may originate from the ovary itself or more commonly from communicating nearby structures such as fallopian tubes or the inner lining of the abdomen. The ovary is made up of three different c ...
on 25 January 1970, aged 61.
Art
Among Angus' influences were
Byzantine art
Byzantine art comprises the body of Christian Greek artistic products of the Eastern Roman Empire, as well as the nations and states that inherited culturally from the empire. Though the empire itself emerged from the decline of Rome and lasted u ...
and
cubism.
She was also influenced by the English painter
Christopher Perkins' 1931 painting of
Mount Taranaki
Mount Taranaki (), also known as Mount Egmont, is a dormant stratovolcano in the Taranaki region on the west coast of New Zealand's North Island. It is the second highest point in the North Island, after Mount Ruapehu. The mountain has a seco ...
, a response to New Zealand's distinctive clear lighting. Her landscapes came in a time when many people were concerned to create a distinctly New Zealand style, but Angus herself was not interested in defining a national style so much as her own style. Her paintings are clear, hard-edged and sharply-defined. In the 1930s and 1940s she painted scenes of
Canterbury
Canterbury (, ) is a cathedral city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated in the heart of the City of Canterbury local government district of Kent, England. It lies on the River Stour.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the primate of ...
and
Otago. One of the most famous of these is ''
Cass
Cass may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Cass (surname), a list of people
* Cass (given name), a list of people and fictional characters
* Big Cass, ring name of wrestler William Morrissey
* Cass, in British band Skunk Anansie
* Ca ...
'' (1936)
in which she portrayed the bare emptiness of the Canterbury landscape using simplified forms and mostly unblended colours arranged in sections in a style remiscent of
poster art
A poster is a large sheet that is placed either on a public space to promote something or on a wall as decoration. Typically, posters include both textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or wholly text ...
. ''Cass'' was voted New Zealand's most-loved painting in a 2006 television poll.
For a while, she lived next to the artist
Leo Bensemann
Leo Vernon Bensemann (1 May 1912 – 2 January 1986) was a New Zealand artist, printer, typographer, publisher and editor.
Bensemenn was born in Tākaka, New Zealand, on 1 May 1912. He moved to Christchurch in 1931 with his friend Lawrence Ba ...
. Their adjacent flats became something of a hub of the local art scene and it is said that they spurred each other on in their art. It has been stated that Angus produced some of her finest pieces during this time including many portraits. She also produced comic art, signed with the name ''Rita Cook.''
Angus' pacifist beliefs can be seen in her art of the 1940s, when she avoided any kind of war work. Angus stated, "As an artist it is my work to create life and not to destroy it."
She created three goddess images symbolizing peace of which "Rutu" is the most well known.
In the early 1950s Angus spent some time travelling around New Zealand. One of her trips was to
Central Otago, where she painted her well-known piece ''Central Otago.''
In 1955 Angus moved to Wellington and from this time her landscapes focused on Wellington and the Hawke's Bay which she visited regularly.
''Boats, Island Bay'' is one such iconic Wellington painting.
She painted a large number of portraits, including "Head of a Maori Boy" (1938) and "Portrait (
Betty Curnow)" (1942). She was able to capture the personality of her subjects, moving beyond a mere representation of their form.
Angus also painted 55 self-portraits, particularly during her later years when she became afflicted with increasingly serious bouts of narcissistic disorder.
In 1958, she won a New Zealand Art Societies' Fellowship and travelled to
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
to study at the
Chelsea School of Art
Chelsea College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London based in London, United Kingdom, and is a leading British art and design institution with an international reputation.
It offers further and higher educat ...
and the
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA c ...
. She also visited
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
and Europe and studied modern and traditional European art.
Angus devoted much of 1960 to the painting of a mural at
Napier Girls' High School which can now be seen at the front of the school hall. The mural was commissioned to commemorate the girls who died in the
1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake
Events
January
* January 2 – South Dakota native Ernest Lawrence invents the cyclotron, used to accelerate particles to study nuclear physics.
* January 4 – German pilot Elly Beinhorn begins her flight to Africa.
* January 22 – Sir I ...
.
Exhibitions
* 1930: exhibition with Canterbury Society of Arts
* 1932: exhibition with
The Group
* 1940: ''Cass'' and ''Self Portrait'' exhibited at the National Centennial Exhibition of New Zealand Art
* 1957: Angus' first solo exhibition, at the Wellington Art Centre gallery followed by solo exhibitions in 1961, 1963, 1964, 1967
["Dictionary of Women Artists" Edited by Gaze, Delia. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers 1997, pp. 161–165]
* 1965: Commonwealth Institute, London (Contemporary Painting in New Zealand)
* 1969: Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, (New Zealand Modern Art)
* 1982–1983: Rita Angus retrospective at the National Art Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand.
["Rita Angus" Edited by Barr, Mary. Published 1982. p7.]
* 2008: a major retrospective of Angus' work at the
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa''Rita Angus: Life and Vision'' to celebrate the centenary of her birth, followed by a tour to main centres around New Zealand.
* 2022: an exhibition celebrating 40 years of Angus's work - Rita Angus: New Zealand Modernist , He Ringatoi Hou o Aotearoa. The Museum of New Zealand , Te Papa Tongarewa.
Further reading
* Anne Kirker, ''New Zealand Women Artists: A Survey of 150 Years'' (1986, Craftsman House)
* Jill Trevelyan, ''Rita Angus: An Artist's Life'' (2008, Te Papa Press)
References
External links
Works by Angus in the collection of Auckland Art GalleryWorks by Rita Angus in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa TongarewaWorks by Angus in the collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu
{{DEFAULTSORT:Angus, Rita
1908 births
1970 deaths
New Zealand people of Scottish descent
Modern painters
People educated at Palmerston North Girls' High School
University of Canterbury alumni
Alumni of Chelsea College of Arts
Ilam School of Fine Arts alumni
People from Hastings, New Zealand
People associated with the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
Deaths from ovarian cancer
Deaths from cancer in New Zealand
20th-century New Zealand painters
20th-century New Zealand women artists
People associated with the Canterbury Society of Arts
New Zealand pacifists
People associated with The Group (New Zealand art)