Click on the thumbnails below to find out more.

Central Otago  1953-56/1969	Arrowtown (Coronet Peak from Speargrass Flat)  1953	Sketch for Central Otago (Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkables)  1953
Sketch for Central Otago (Naseby)  1953	Sketch for Central Otago (Naseby)  1953	Sketch for Central Otago (Cecil Peak, Arrowtown)  1953
Sketch for Central Otago (Naseby)  1953	Flood, Hawke’s Bay  1955-56	Flood, Hawke’s Bay  1955
Landscape with Arum Lily  1953	Fungi  circa 1956-57	Landscape with Sea  1953
Mangonui  1953	Mangonui  1953	Northland  circa 1955
Clouds and sea  circa 1953	Clouds and sea  circa 1953	Harbour scene and bush  1950
Waikanae  1951	Seashore, Waikanae  1952	Seascape, heatwave  1949
Iris  1953	Garden, Waikanae  circa 1952	Colour notes  1950s
Plum tree at Waikanae  1952	Autumn  1951

Sketch for Central Otago (Cecil Peak, Arrowtown)

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Rita Angus spent two weeks travelling in Central Otago in February 1953. She made watercolours of the places she visited and pencil notes of details, such as rocks and haystacks.

When Angus returned home to Christchurch, she wrote to Douglas Lilburn: ‘It was the same country I remembered but so much more, colourful, strange & exhilarating. I’m glad I went then, there was that golden glow over everything.’

Five years later, Douglas Lilburn bought 20 of Angus’s sketches for her painting Central Otago. In 1973, he donated them to the National Art Gallery (now Te Papa) ‘so that the record of her journey and her vision would be preserved intact’.