Self-portrait (nude, seated)


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Self-portrait (nude, seated)  circa 1942
pencil and wash, 425 x 280 mm
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, on loan from the Rita Angus Estate


Six months after her miscarriage, Rita Angus made a series of drawings of her naked body. This was an especially difficult time for Angus. She wrote to Douglas Lilburn, the father of her lost child:

‘I went to bed about ten, and I wept till midnight … I wept because of the weight of the crushing circumstances of my life (unnecessary), and I wept because of the waste of human beauty lying dead on battlefields, at the bottom of the sea, and the waste of lives of women like myself, but less fortunate, who cannot blossom into full womanhood. The cruelty that is in men and women!’


> Back to Portraits and self-portraits 1939-52


All artworks are reproduced courtesy of the Estate of Rita Angus.