Rita Angus 'Sailing on the Motueka River, Pangatotara'

Pangatotara, (originally Paengatotara), gets its name from being the place where tōtara logs gathered, having been carried down the Motueka River by floods and cast ashore. During World War Two, a few mighty tōtara from the New Zealand art world briefly washed up there as well. Work was available harvesting tobacco on Herbert Helm’s farm, with free accommodation in his holiday baches, which he advertised in the Nelson Evening Mail as “ideally situated, Motueka River. Excellent fishing.” Helm sympathised with conscientious objectors during World War II. He was himself prosecuted for a breach of service in the Home Guard, lodging an appeal against being a reservist.

The two years from January 1939 to January 1941 in Christchurch had been unhappy ones for Angus: Harvey Gresham left her for another woman, her exhibition of Central Otago watercolours made no sales, and her sister Edna died. She must have been relieved to escape north to join fellow pacifist Harry Courtney Archer (1918-2002) to pick tobacco in February 1941. Importantly, seasonal horticultural work was deemed non-essential, as their pacifism would not allow them to contribute to the war effort. Archer had been granted an exemption from military service in Christchurch but was encouraged by his father to move on from working at the family flour mill in Rangiora. Angus describes Archer noisily attacking a typewriter as he worked on an article for publication in the British Architectural Review (eventually published in 1942). A confirmed bachelor, Archer was a friend of journalist Fred Jones (1916-1991) whose stories for Press Junior Rita Angus had illustrated. Jones was also the pacifist and socialist who had recently married Angus’s sister Jean. A little lonely for female company, Angus encouraged fellow Christchurch artist and pacifist Chrystabel Aitken (1904-2005) to join her in Helm’s two-roomed bach nicknamed “Arcadia”. Together they worked gathering tobacco, and loudly denounced warmaking: “We have been fortunate in being able to talk out in the fields next door and believe me, quite a lot of seditious subjects too…”, wrote Angus in a letter to Betty Curnow.

Shortages of oil paints during the early years of the war were ameliorated by mixing powder colours with linseed oil, then completely alleviated by imports in 1943. It was then that Doris Lusk painted her oil on cardboard Tobacco Fields, Pangatotara Nelson (1943) which was gifted to the Auckland Art Gallery in by Colin McCahon in 1966. The colour palette in this Angus work is remarkably similar to Lusk’s painting, with dark blue lines marking the contours of the yellow-green hills of Wharepapa, the Arthur range, with the dots of wilding pines marked on the foothills. The centrally-placed bright white triangles of the headsail and mainsail of the sloop sailing upriver make a jaunty summer motif, perhaps even symbolising peace during a time of war.

As the tobacco season ended in autumn, Angus departed for Wellington, and worked with the pacifist cooperative Woodkraft. There she applied the skills acquired working for Chrystabel Aitken’s husband Gordon McArthur in Christchurch to designing toys.

Linda Tyler