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Fay and Jane Birkinshaw  1938	Cleopatra  1938	Leo Bensemann  1938
Lawrence Baigent  1938-39/1943	Head of a Maori boy  1938-39	Self-portrait  1936-37
Self-portrait (in green jacket)  1936-37	Self-portrait  circa 1937	Rita Cook bookplate  1937-38
Composition with self-portrait  circa 1937	Portrait of Jean Angus  1937	Jean Angus  1937
Tilli Frankel  1939	Jean Stevenson  1937

Fay and Jane Birkinshaw

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The blonde girl in this picture, Fay Birkinshaw, later became the novelist Fay Weldon. She recalled posing with her sister: ‘We were put in our matching check dresses and told to sit still.’

Rita Angus gave the portrait to the girls’ parents, but their mother, Margaret, secretly loathed it. She felt it verged on caricature. Margaret tried to leave the painting behind when she left for England, but a friend raced to the docks with it just as the gangway was rising.

According to Weldon, ‘My mother said she nearly dropped it overboard, but good manners intervened and instead she told the friend to give it back to Rita.’