Collection of Rita Angus’ work on display at MTG

Rita Angus is in the the house, in the form of an important selection of works from the Te Papa Tongarewa collection, currently on display at MTG Hawkes Bay Tai Ahuriri for the next two months.

It is fitting after all, given that Rita was born in Hastings and that following her death in 1970, her ashes were interred next to her father’s in Wharerangi Cemetery, Napier. Despite the fact that in between those events Rita lived successively in Palmerston North, Christchurch, and Wellington,  she remains an inextricable part of Hawke’s Bay’s story.

Regular visits to her parents who retired to Napier meant that Hawke’s Bay became the subject of many of her paintings, including Churches, Hawke’s Bay 1963, and Fog, Hawke’s Bay 1968.  These and other iconic representations of Hawke’s Bay have ensured that the region remains part of Aotearoa’s cultural narrative.

Rita Angus: New Zealand Modernist/He Ringatoi Hou O Aotearoa includes many of Rita’s most important works, including Rutu, 1951, Cleopatra, 1938, and Central Otago, 1969 and is great for all ages.  

There are of  significant number of portraits in the exhibtion. Perhaps most powerfully, and certainly most presient, is the work pictured here, Rutu.

Writer Jill Trevelyan explains that Rutu is an updating of the Madonna figure - a Pacific goddess who owes a debt to the East. Originally titled Sun Goddess, Rutu was later renamed after the wife of Tamihana Te Rauparaha Rutu (Ruth). Tamihana and his wife preached Christian faith during the musket wars and are credited with helping to bring an end to the fighting. Rutu expresses Angus’ pacifist convictions and heartfelt aspirations for the restoration of world peace following World War Two.

Another fascinating thing about this portrait is the extent to which it predates the Feminist Movement in its revival of feminine spirituality and goddess themes some twenty years before the feminists.

These ideas of internationalism, peace, harmony, and equality exist in the work. Yet the work also tells a deeply personal story of restoration and equilibrium.

When Rita created Rutu she was convalescing. The 1940s had been tough for her; she’d been living on the breadline and tended to sacrifice company to focus on her work. Suffering bouts of sickness and then a mental health episode, she had moved to Waikanae to stay with her parents and recuperate, following a period of hospital care. The background of the painting shows Waikanae beach.

Rutu holds a lotus flower, symbolising purity, enlightenment, and spiritual growth. The lotus’s ability to bloom beautifully amidst muddy waters is often seen as a metaphor for achieving inner peace and tranquility. Years earlier, Rita had miscarried a child. Regarding Rutu’s genesis, she wrote to Lilburn, the child’s father:

‘I began with the watercolor of my father before me, and your portrait at the end of the room. My memory served me well; about three hours later, a child about 16 or 17 years of age, like my family, but not mine; she belongs to you. Of European birth, simple, monastic, Western schooling—you will find her in the paintings on the walls of the Temple Caves of India, where wandering Yogi priests sheltered, in the Bodhisattvas of the Buddhist shrines where the Chinese worshipped, in the flower and tea ceremonies of the Samurai. The Geisha and the Priestesses of the Shinto shrines of Japan.’

Rita's genius lies in her ability to bring her ideas or messages into the way she paints. She achieves this through a deep awareness and understanding of the world history of painting. Rutu spans painting traditions from the diverse sources she mentions above, serving as a visual messenger of universal values and global ideologies.

Regarding her goddess paintings, Rita said:‘These canvases, when painted, will not count much if anything, to an older, or my own generation. I paint for the next two generations, aiming for peace, progression, and the continuation of races.’

The time is now.

Curator Lizzie Bisley will be doing a floor talk at 1pm on Saturday 6 July looking at what shaped Rita Angus’ unique vision and we will be screening Lovely Rita – A Painters Life at 2pm on Sunday 14 July followed by a Q&A session with Dame Gaylene Preston and Jill Trevelyan.

Rita Angus: New Zealand Modernist/He Ringatoi Hou O Aotearoa. Developed and presented by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

 At MTG Hawkes Bay Tai Ahuriri. Running until August 25, 2024. Entry is free.

Published in the Hawke’s Bay Today newspaper 29 June 2024 and written by Toni MacKinnon, Art Curator at MTG Hawke’s Bay.

Image: Rutu 1951, Rita Angus. Collection of Te Papa Tongarewa. 

1 July 2024

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