Rita Angus took the train to Cass in 1936
She was on a sketching trip with two friends.
Cass is high in the Waimakariri basin, at the base of Kā Tiriti o te Moana, the Southern Alps. In the 1930s and 1940s, it was a favourite spot for artists.
Mountains, Cass (1936) by Rita AngusTe Papa
This is a vast landscape, with no humans in sight
just an abandoned, 19th-century sheep musterer’s hut.
We can almost feel the wind in the springy tussock
and the steepness of the rolling hills.
High above, washes of blue paint pick out deep mountain ravines, and snowy peaks.
Clouds blow past, marked out with pencil lines and watercolour wash.
This sketch is one of many works Angus painted of Cass.
Her two best known paintings of Cass are in the Christchurch Art Gallery Collection - ‘Cass’ and ‘Mountains, Cass’.
Angus wrote, in 1944: “I am amazed that at one time … I had the power & courage to paint ‘Cass’.”
Text by Te Papa curators Lizzie Bisley and Hanahiva Rose, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 2022.
All images reproduced courtesy of the Estate of Rita Angus.
