Rita Angus (12 March 1908 – 25 January 1970) was a New Zealand painter. Along with Colin McCahon and Toss Woollaston, she is credited as one of the leading figures in twentieth century New Zealand art. She worked primarily in oil and water colour, and is well known for her portraits and landscapes.
Henrietta Catherine Angus was born on 12 March 1908 in Hastings, the eldest of seven children of William McKenzie Angus and Ethel Violet Crabtree. In 1921, her family moved to Palmerston North and she attended Palmerston North Girls' High School (1922–26). In 1927, she began studying at the Canterbury College School of Art. She never completed her diploma in fine arts but continued to study until 1933, including classes at the Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland. During her studies she was introduced to renaissance and medieval art and received traditional training in life drawing, still life and landscape painting.
Angus married Alfred Cook, a fellow artist, on 13 June 1930, but they separated in 1934, and divorced in 1939. Angus signed many of her paintings as Rita Cook between 1930 and 1946, but after she discovered in 1941 that Alfred Cook had remarried, she changed her surname by deed poll to McKenzie, her paternal grandmother's surname. As a result, some of her paintings are also signed R. Mackenzie or R. McKenzie, but the majority are signed Rita Angus.
After a short period teaching art in Napier, Angus lived mostly in Christchurch during the 1930s and 1940s. In the late 1940s she suffered from mental illness and entered Sunnyside Mental Hospital in 1949. In 1950 she moved to Waikanae to convalesce, and then settled in Wellington in 1955.
Death: From December 1969, Angus' condition rapidly deteriorated; she died in Wellington Hospital of ovarian cancer on 25 January 1970, aged 61
Rita Angus New Zealand, (1908-1970) Hotel de Denis etching Pencil signed, titled, and numbered (9/200) lower. Monogrammed in the plate. Strong, ink-rich impression.
Rita Angus Study for Detail, Portrait of R Vaughan Williams watercolour on paper certificate of authenticity from Page Blackie Gallery affixed verso 160 x 165mm PROVENANCE Private collection, Auckland. Acquired from Page Blackie Gallery, Wellington.
Rita Angus Portrait of Robert Erwin c1953 watercolour on paper 330 x 230mm PROVENANCE Private collection, Canterbury. Gifted by bequest, c2003; Collection of Lawrence Baigent and Robert Erwin, Wellington. Rita Angus – Portrait of Robert Erwin Essay by VICTORIA MUNN In 1953, Rita Angus wrote to Douglas Lilburn, ‘The great men rise from colour to sunlight.’ 1 Quoting John Ruskin’s 1870 lecture on colour at the University of Oxford, Angus’ letter demonstrates her artistic interest in colour – its symbolic potential, and the depth and light that can be achieved. Around the same time, Angus painted a portrait of a new friend, Robert Erwin, which exemplifies her economical use of clear colours and line to capture the essence of her sitter. In the late summer of 1953, amidst her travels around Central Otago, Rita Angus met Robert Erwin. A university student with his finger on the pulse of the Christchurch art scene, Erwin was first introduced to Angus by Lawrence Baigent, who had lived adjacent to Angus’ studio on Cambridge Terrace, Christchurch, in the late 1930s. Erwin and Baigent were to become long-term partners, and Erwin instigated a lasting friendship with Angus. That same year, he began regularly calling in at Angus’ cottage in Clifton, Christchurch. He eagerly tracked the progress of her oil painting of the Central Otago landscape, and served as an artistic sounding board for Angus. Erwin was also involved in her artistic practice: although Angus drew upon her Northland sketches of a young MÄori boy for her (unfinished) oil painting of St Luke, in the absence of her initial model, Erwin — who had MÄori ancestry — stepped in. The pair also worked together on a tapestry depicting MÄui reeling in a fishing net, Angus painting the design and Erwin handling the weaving. 2 And, as evidenced by Portrait of Robert Erwin, Erwin was also the subject of several portraits by Angus. Angus’ confident use of watercolour is on display in Portrait of Robert Erwin. The war years brought a shortage of painting materials. Rather than making use of household paints or devising her own media, Angus embraced watercolour. Angus cited the influence of watercolourist Margaret Stoddart (1865–1934) on her practice, the medium is threaded throughout her oeuvre, and she is celebrated for her great command of both watercolour and oil. For Angus, portraits were deeply personal in nature. Her sitters were consistently those with whom she had a personal connection, and she repeatedly gifted the sitter with the finished portrait. Angus’ portraiture demonstrates her perceptive observations of the people around her, and ability to translate their essential qualities into paint. Outlining her approach to portrait painting, Angus explained ‘I note the special person-ality of the sitter, and often endeavour to express through a simplicity of line and colour, the content of the sitter’s interesting complexity and diversity of moods.’ Indeed, in Portrait of Robert Erwin, Angus draws upon a bold use of line and colour to create form, and the figure’s direct gaze and positioning, pushed up against the picture plane, imbue the portrait with an audacious intensity. 1 Rita Angus, letter to Douglas Lilburn, 3 May 1954, Alexander Turnbull Library, MS-Papers-7623. 2 Jill Trevelyan, Rita Angus: An artist’s life (Wellington: Te Papa Press, 2020), 271.
