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 railway stop on the Midland Line between Ōtautahi Christchurch and Te Tai Poutini 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. Cass, her best-known work, includes railway sheds, a stationary wagon, telegraph poles and stacked timber, as well as a solitary waiting passenger. Other finished works from this visit featured a derelict musterers’ hut and the Canterbury College Biological Station with a passing steam engine.

(He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil, 2025)