Self-portrait (with moth and caterpillar)

This unfinished self-portrait was made by Rita Angus in 1943, while she was living near Sumner, in Christchurch. The work shows Angus on Sumner beach, with the curve of the bay behind her and smoky-blue Southern Alps in the distance. Angus’ face and the landscape are painted in remarkable colour and detail, as are a moth and caterpillar perched on her left shoulder. The rest of the work is loosely sketched in pencil.

The self-portrait is full of symbols of renewal, nature and harmony. As Vita Cochran has noted, a Māori woman, possibly intended to personify Spring, stands on the beach behind Angus’ right shoulder. A snake is harmoniously twined around her upper body; the moth and caterpillar can be seen as symbolic of the movement from one phase of life to another.^[1]

1943 was a significant year for Angus – her parents bought her a house in Sumner, providing a settled home for the first time in four years. She expressed, throughout the year, an increased commitment to her life as an artist and a pacifist. In a letter to Douglas Lilburn, dated 1 August 1943, she writes: “I am very fortunate, it is as though my life is in two, I am beginning the second half, with a little wisdom from experience and knowledge, and a little genius. I am free to flower, if only for a few years.”^[2]

[1] Vita Cochran, ‘What the pyramid contains: the early self-portraits’ in William McAloon and Jill Trevelyan (ed.s), Rita Angus: Life and Vision (Wellington, 2008), p. 42.
[2] Rita Angus, letter to Douglas Lilburn (Alexander Turnbull Library, MS-Papers-7623-052) quoted in Jill Trevelyan, Rita Angus: An Artist’s Life, second edition (Wellington, 2021), p. 160.