Dona Nobis Pacem


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Dona Nobis Pacem (Ralph Vaughan Williams)  1944
oil on canvas, 786 x 680 mm
Fletcher Trust Collection


Rita Angus admired the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, who taught her close friend Douglas Lilburn in London in the late 1930s. Vaughan Williams was a well-known pacifist and composed the cantata Dona Nobis Pacem (Grant us peace) in 1936.

Angus includes scenes from her own life in her portrait of Vaughan Williams. The apple branch symbolises the pacifist community at Riverside, where she may have had the idea for the painting. She sketched the deserted homestead at nearby Pangatotara. The blonde child on the beach might be Angus herself as a girl.


> Back to Pacifism and the goddesses 1944-53


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