Name: Rita Angus in Motueka, 1941
Location: Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū

Rita Angus in Motueka, 1941

Rita Angus Untitled (Hop Kilns, Motueka) 1941. Watercolour. Harry Courtney Archer estate, 2002. Reproduced courtesy of the Estate of Rita Angus

Art Bite

Past event

Meet in the exhibition

Free

Join art history lecturer Dorothee Pauli as she discusses Untitled (Hop Kilns, Motueka) by Rita Angus in our recently opened exhibition Beneath the Ranges on the first floor.

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 each Friday at 12.30pm.

Related reading: Free event

Beneath the Ranges

23 October 2017

Mid twentieth-century artists focus on people working the land

Rita Angus Untitled (Hop Kilns, Motueka)

At the start of 1941, Rita Angus, then a leading figure in Christchurch art circles, left the city for good. It was wartime. With many being directed into prescribed war effort work, she chose to take up employment for several months on a tobacco farm at Pangatotara, near Motueka in the Nelson district. There she worked alongside fellow pacifists, including artist Chrystabel Aitken and Courtney Archer, who owned this painting. Long days filled with demanding physical labour saw Angus harvesting and grading tobacco leaves and sometimes tending the drying kilns on the night shift. Travelling into Nelson on occasional weekends meant walking more than twelve kilometres to the nearest bus stop. Despite the demands of such a life, and shortages of art materials, Angus managed to find time to paint the local landscape, including this view of a hop kiln near Motueka. By April, she was able to report: “The harvest is over, and I am glad, as I am very, very weary of physical labour.”

(Beneath the ranges, 18 February – 23 October 2017)

Notes

Untitled (Hop Kilns, Motueka) by Rita Angus

This article first appeared in The Press on 28 December 2005

"Malt is the soul of beer and yeast gives it life but the kiss of the hop is the vitality of that life." Tom Inglis

Nelson has long held a strong reputation for growing excellent hops with a substantial industry based on the crop being developed in the region in the late 19th century. Motueka in particular has an extremely suitable climate for growing hops and the majority of New Zealand's hop production occurs within close proximity of the town. By the 1940s commercial production of hops had fully developed into a successful horticultural enterprise which Rita Angus has in part captured in her 1941 watercolour Untitled (Hop Kilns, Motueka).