Rita Angus

Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1908, d.1970

Aquilegia

  • 1953
  • Watercolour
  • Lawrence Baigent / Robert Erwin Bequest, 2003
  • 295 x 221mm
  • 2003/59

“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- )

Exhibition History