item details
NameSketch for Central Otago (Cecil Peak, Arrowtown)
ProductionRita Angus; artist; 1953; New Zealand
Classificationwatercolours, works on paper
Materialswatercolour, paper
Materials Summarywatercolour
DimensionsImage: 378mm (width), 284mm (height)
Registration Number1972-0030-12
Credit lineGift of Douglas Lilburn, 1972
Overview
This is one of 16 watercolour and pencil studies that Rita Angus produced in 1953, following a three week trip through Central Otago by bus. Angus recorded the landscapes and towns that she passed through, before using these studies to create an ambitious oil painting of the entire Central Otago region. The oil painting is also in Te Papa's collection: https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/44236
The work was commissioned from Angus by her close friend Douglas Lilburn, one of New Zealand's most important 20th-century composers. Lilburn gave the watercolour and pencil studies, and the finished oil painting, to the National Art Gallery (now Te Papa) in 1972.