Exhibitions
Events
On display
Rita Angus's Cass
Rita Angus Cass 1936. Oil on canvas on board. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased 1955. Reproduced courtesy of the Estate of Rita Angus
Art Bite
Past event
Meet at the front desk
Free
To mark the final week of In the Vast Emptiness on the ground floor, join guide coordinator Rebecca Ogle as she discusses one of New Zealand's favourite paintings, Cass by Rita Angus.
Art Bites are 30-minute lunchtime presentations on a single work on display, presented by our staff, guides and guest speakers.
There's a new Art Bite to enjoy every Friday at 12.30pm.
Related
Exhibition
In the Vast Emptiness
8 January – 21 August 2016
The Canterbury landscape as captured by twentieth century painters.
Collection
Rita Angus Cass
In the autumn of 1936, Rita Angus, with artist friends Louise Henderson and Julia Scarvell, took a ten-day sketching trip to Cass – a remote outpost on the Midland Line to Te Tai Poutini / the West Coast. Angus completed several works in oil and watercolour in the following months, all showing her attentiveness to human presence in the sweeping landscape. Built structure and material in Cass, her best-known work, includes railway sheds, a stationary wagon, telegraph poles and stacked up timber opposite a solitary waiting passenger. Other finished works from this visit featured a derelict musterers’ hut, and the Canterbury College Mountain Biological Station with a passing steam engine.
(From Here on the Ground, 18 May – 17 November 2024)