B.
Irises by Rita Angus
Collection
This article first appeared as 'The meticulous small world of Rita Angus' in The Press on 9 December 2014.
When the National Art Gallery touring retrospective 'Rita Angus' opened at Christchurch's Robert McDougall Art Gallery in 1983, Robert Erwin recalled the conversations he had with Angus while walking together near her Clifton Hill home in the 1950s. Describing her keen interest in the natural world, he alluded to how this had informed her painting: 'She taught me how to look closely at small things, to look outward to larger things, and to reconcile the two'. Born and educated in Christchurch, Erwin worked as a reference librarian at the University of Canterbury between 1972 and 1993 and was the first president of the Friends of the Robert McDougall Art Gallery. He was an avid and knowledgeable consumer of culture, with interests in history, architecture, music and literature as well as the visual arts. Erwin and his partner, the writer and Caxton Press editor Lawrence Baigent, lived together for more than 30 years and when Erwin died in 2003 much of their extensive and significant art collection was bequeathed to Christchurch Art Gallery. This remarkable gift included ten works by Angus – a leading figure in twentieth-century New Zealand art – amongst them this luminous and exquisitely observed watercolour from 1942.
The subject is deceptively simple – a single stem of iris flowers, some open, some still in bud, picked from the artist's garden and placed casually into a modest vase. It's only when you allow your eye to follow the undulating curves of those pendulous petals, each clearly occupying its own distinct position in space, that you begin to appreciate the complex geometry involved in rendering such a composition, let alone making it vibrate with life. Watercolour is a delicate and unstable medium, yet the precision and clarity of Irises is breathtaking, conveying a range of subtle textures, from velvety blooms that seem to absorb the light, to flexing, blade-like leaves and the smooth, shining vase that contains them. Often called 'jewel-like', Angus's flower paintings are meticulous and skilful, yet somehow just as alive as her portraits of people. The writer Janet Paul has described how Angus 'painted the mystery in the everyday' and 'drew people and plants as though seeing them for the first time'.
Angus was fortunate to be born into a family that recognised and valued her artistic abilities and her parents arranged her first private painting lessons while she was at primary school. Those first teachers taught her both the basics of technique and also the importance of observation, or, as Angus put it, how to 'draw seeing every feather'. Believing that the first duty of the artist was to find beauty in daily life, Angus later followed a Chinese approach to observing the natural world, which involved a process of looking, absorbing and remembering. She would often study a subject for hours, concentrating on the essentials of its form, colour and texture.
Angus frequently used flowers as allegorical motifs in her portrait works, echoing their importance as symbols in Medieval and Renaissance art. Named after the Greek goddess of the rainbow, irises have long been associated with faith, wisdom, hope and courage, but for Angus they also held more personal connotations. In a letter to her close friend Douglas Lilburn in 1943, she likened her development as an artist to the growth of 'a tiny New Zealand flower', stating 'I think I may belong to the Iris family one day'.
Related reading: A Room of One’s Own
Collection
Rita Angus Irises
A keen gardener, Rita Angus painted flower studies throughout her career. During the 1940s in particular she painted some very elegant and botanically exact works such as Irises. Her flower studies allude to the symbolic meanings of flowers, a common feature of Medieval and Renaissance art. She often included flowers in her portraits to represent their associated meanings. The iris stands for faith, wisdom and hope. Angus was born in Hastings. She studied at the Canterbury College School of Art from 1927 to 1933. In 1930 she married Canterbury artist Alfred Cook and, although they separated in 1934, she signed her work ‘Rita Cook’ until 1941. She lived and worked in Christchurch until 1955 when she moved to Wellington. In 1958 Angus was awarded an Association of New Zealand Art Societies Fellowship, which allowed her to visit England and Europe.
Exhibition
A Room of One's Own
Three influential female artists united by talent, tenacity and self-belief.
Notes
Rita Angus by Leo Bensemann
This article first appeared in The Press as 'Viewing Rita Angus with Leo's eyes' on 26 May 2015
Notes
Raise your glass (house)
Huge congratulations to Zina Swanson who has just been announced as the Francis Hodgkins Fellow for 2013.
Collection
Louise Henderson June
At a time in her career when many might have expected her to slow down or even retire, French-born Louise Henderson embarked upon one of her most ambitious creative projects. The Twelve Months distilled her impressions of her life in Aotearoa New Zealand into a dozen tall canvases, filtering the rhythms of the year through her ‘abstract poetic of nature’. Borrowing their proportions from the elegant ‘double square’ of her studio windows, they combined two important aspects of her practice: the all-seeing viewpoints and organisational principles of cubism and the ability to use colour to evoke both form and atmosphere. Often inspired by the view through her window, Henderson manipulated a complex set of variables, considering how the seasons affected the weather and landscape, the changing light and position of the sun, and the fluctuating activities, rituals and moods of people in both the city and the countryside.
In the ‘winter’ months, June and July, Henderson skilfully balanced colour, form and movement to evoke rain-laden clouds, drenched fields and cold, boisterous winds.
Collection
Louise Henderson July
At a time in her career when many might have expected her to slow down or even retire, French-born Louise Henderson embarked upon one of her most ambitious creative projects. The Twelve Months distilled her impressions of her life in Aotearoa New Zealand into a dozen tall canvases, filtering the rhythms of the year through her ‘abstract poetic of nature’. Borrowing their proportions from the elegant ‘double square’ of her studio windows, they combined two important aspects of her practice: the all-seeing viewpoints and organisational principles of cubism and the ability to use colour to evoke both form and atmosphere. Often inspired by the view through her window, Henderson manipulated a complex set of variables, considering how the seasons affected the weather and landscape, the changing light and position of the sun, and the fluctuating activities, rituals and moods of people in both the city and the countryside.
In the ‘winter’ months, June and July, Henderson skilfully balanced colour, form and movement to evoke rain-laden clouds, drenched fields and cold, boisterous winds.
Notes
People in glasshouses
A few days ago, there were lots of little bits of glass and metal strewn (in a highly systematic way) across the floor of our NG gallery space.
Collection
Frances Hodgkins Return of the River
By 1937 Frances Hodgkins had established herself as a major artist in Britain. During this period she began using gouache, which became one of her favoured mediums in the final years of her career.
This work highlights the experimental quality that gouache offered her at this time. Using an almost calligraphic technique, the paint has been applied freely and expressively using a variety of brush marks.
Hodgkins was born in Dunedin and was initially trained by her father, part-time watercolourist William Matthew Hodgkins. In 1893 she took classes with G. P. Nerli, and in 1895/96 studied at the Dunedin School of Art. Hodgkins left to study at the London Polytechnic in 1901 and in 1903 she exhibited at the Royal Academy, becoming the first New Zealander to have the honour of being ‘hung on the line’. Living in Paris between 1908 and 1912, Hodgkins taught at the Académie Colarossi, where she was the first woman on staff. She eventually settled in England, where she exhibited with many art groups and galleries, including the Lefevre Galleries in London from 1932.
Collection
Frances Hodgkins Still Life
The well-known New Zealand expatriate artist Frances Hodgkins travelled to Ibiza in October 1932, remaining on the island until July 1933. These were high times for the artist, who relished living and painting in the island’s sharp light immensely. Hodgkins kept company with fellow New Zealand painters Maude Burge, Gwen Knight and May Smith, whom she fondly referred to as “my three friends”. At this time Hodgkins painted still-life subjects out in the landscape as opposed to indoors. Everyday objects were often arranged on a table, or sometimes directly on the ground, with the Ibiza landscape extending into the distance beyond. She commented at the time, “In this clear ivory light every common object looks important and significant … things appear in stark simplicity minus all detail – nothing corked up … or hidden as in the grey, or brown, light of the north.”
(New Dawn fades, November 2018)
Collection
Frances Hodgkins Zipp
Frances Hodgkins was seventy-seven years old when she painted Zipp in 1945, nearing the end of her career and life. It is one of the last paintings she completed. With its semiabstract shapes and forms set against a despairingly dark background, Zipp highlights how Frances continued to push herself as an artist even through her later years.
Seemingly random objects emerge through the gloom; some distinguisable, others abstracted beyond recognition: belts, a zip, a shoe and some clothing. These personal items belonging to the artist serve not only as a still life, but also as a kind of self-portrait. Most telling is the way they are scattered and heaped in a rumpled pile, perhaps symbolising the disorder in her life at this time.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
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Frances Hodgkins Still Life with Red Jar
“You say in yr last [letter] that I will not tag on to Colonial life after staying away so long – you surely don’t expect & want me to settle down into a Maiden Aunt do you & throw up career & ambition & lose the precious ground I have gained – you are much too dear and unselfish for that I am sure. I am coming out merely to see you & Sis & the children, to be with you for a while & then to return to my work like any man of business. To make you happy I must be happy myself. I want to see you badly & feel I must come soon at no matter what sacrifice. But do realise Mother that it’s on this side of the world that my work and future career lie. I grieve sometimes that you do not understand this more.” —Frances Hodgkins, excerpt from a letter to her mother, Rachel Hodgkins, 1911
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
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Rita Angus Aquilegia
“I live out my own world & follow in the lives of Frances Hodgkins […] and other women painters”, wrote Rita Angus. One of these other painters was fellow Waitaha Canterbury artist Margaret Stoddart. Both Rita and Margaret developed a deep appreciation of botanical subjects in their practices, alongside their work as landscape painters. Their approach to watercolour couldn’t be more different, however: Margaret with her lively impressionistic approach contrasts with Rita’s accuracy and detail usually reserved for a botanical artist illustrating a scientific journal.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
Collection
Zina Swanson Untitled
Zina Swanson’s precise, yet poetic painted drawings call attention to the delicacy and vulnerability of nature. Plant matter, insects and other tiny objects she collected over several years take fresh life in brushstrokes that range from feathery to forensically precise. Zina’s interest in her personal – and our human – relationship with the natural world led her to imagine a strange form of cross-species rehabilitation, where wilting forms are supported, a cutting grows the feet of a bird and processed timber receives new prosthetic roots. Her latest painting recounts an early foray into collecting, when she salvaged a discarded stick so large it had to be cut into three and reassembled in her studio. In an associated poem, she wrote: Making them part of my life, by making them part of my paintings Making a special shelf for them in my studio The collection keeps growing.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
Collection
Zina Swanson Untitled
Zina Swanson’s precise, yet poetic painted drawings call attention to the delicacy and vulnerability of nature. Plant matter, insects and other tiny objects she collected over several years take fresh life in brushstrokes that range from feathery to forensically precise. Zina’s interest in her personal – and our human – relationship with the natural world led her to imagine a strange form of cross-species rehabilitation, where wilting forms are supported, a cutting grows the feet of a bird and processed timber receives new prosthetic roots. Her latest painting recounts an early foray into collecting, when she salvaged a discarded stick so large it had to be cut into three and reassembled in her studio. In an associated poem, she wrote: Making them part of my life, by making them part of my paintings Making a special shelf for them in my studio The collection keeps growing.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
Collection
Zina Swanson Untitled
Zina Swanson’s precise, yet poetic painted drawings call attention to the delicacy and vulnerability of nature. Plant matter, insects and other tiny objects she collected over several years take fresh life in brushstrokes that range from feathery to forensically precise. Zina’s interest in her personal – and our human – relationship with the natural world led her to imagine a strange form of cross-species rehabilitation, where wilting forms are supported, a cutting grows the feet of a bird and processed timber receives new prosthetic roots. Her latest painting recounts an early foray into collecting, when she salvaged a discarded stick so large it had to be cut into three and reassembled in her studio. In an associated poem, she wrote: Making them part of my life, by making them part of my paintings Making a special shelf for them in my studio The collection keeps growing.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
Collection
Zina Swanson Untitled
Zina Swanson’s precise, yet poetic painted drawings call attention to the delicacy and vulnerability of nature. Plant matter, insects and other tiny objects she collected over several years take fresh life in brushstrokes that range from feathery to forensically precise. Zina’s interest in her personal – and our human – relationship with the natural world led her to imagine a strange form of cross-species rehabilitation, where wilting forms are supported, a cutting grows the feet of a bird and processed timber receives new prosthetic roots. Her latest painting recounts an early foray into collecting, when she salvaged a discarded stick so large it had to be cut into three and reassembled in her studio. In an associated poem, she wrote: Making them part of my life, by making them part of my paintings Making a special shelf for them in my studio The collection keeps growing.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
Collection
![Untitled [Pot Plant]](/media/cache/ac/dc/acdc8a6cbbf25cf77aeb9e67c525ce9b.jpg)
Rita Angus Untitled [Pot Plant]
“I live out my own world & follow in the lives of Frances Hodgkins […] and other women painters,” wrote Rita Angus. One of those painters was fellow Waitaha Canterbury artist Margaret Stoddart. Like Margaret, Rita developed a deep appreciation of botanical subjects in her work. Although both artists are known for their landscapes, their approach to watercolour couldn’t be more different; Margaret’s lively impressionistic approach contrasts with Rita’s work, which is rich with the detail usually reserved for a botanical artist illustrating a scientific journal.
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )
Notes
Zipp by Frances Hodgkins
‘I can't tell you the horror of the Blackout and the effects on your nerves - the want of ventilation at night is very tiring - perhaps the nastiest part of it all.' - Frances Hodgkins in a letter to her brother, William.
