Sketch for Central Otago (Lake Wakatipu & the Remarkables)

This is one of 16 watercolour and pencil studies that Rita Angus produced in 1953, following a three week trip through Central Otago by bus. Angus recorded the landscapes and towns that she passed through, before using these studies to create an ambitious oil painting of the entire Central Otago region.

The work was commissioned from Angus by her close friend Douglas Lilburn, one of New Zealand's most important 20th-century composers. Lilburn gave the watercolour and pencil studies, and the finished oil painting, to the National Art Gallery (now Te Papa) in 1972.