Lovely Rita

A Perspective

By Mary-Jane Duffy 16/04/2015

When art historian Jill Trevelyan began researching her biography Rita Angus - An Artist's Life, she had little expectation of discovering a cache of new information that would change perceptions about Angus.

Independently, director Gaylene Preston had also started her own research on the artist. Preston heard about Trevelyan's biography and the rest, as they say, is history. Together biographer and director were able to provide a more detailed picture of Angus and her work than has previously been possible, and the result is Lovely Rita (which is sometimes called Rita Angus - A Painter's Life). The documentary debuted at the Doc NZ festival in September 2007, before reaching New Zealand television screens later that year.   

Closely connected to Angus and living near her in the Wellington suburb of Thorndon, was composer Douglas Lilburn. After Lilburn's death in 2001, Angus' letters to him were bequeathed to the Alexander Turnbull Library. It is these letters that revealed the extent of their relationship. Both biographer and filmmaker draw on them generously. In Lovely Rita, actor Loren Taylor reads from the letters and poses as the young Angus, while the voice of Donogh Rees stands in for the older Angus.

The most surprising piece of information that emerged from these letters was the sexual nature of Lilburn and Angus' relationship. This resulted in Angus' pregnancy in 1941; she later miscarried. Much is made of this in the film, and rightly so as it shed new light on both parties — Angus the unconventional, independent woman, and Lilburn the homosexual. As composer Jack Body points out, had their child survived, "the history of New Zealand's artistic creative life would have been changed forever".

Preston has a knack for personalising her documentaries, and this is another excellent example. She interviews a number of people who knew Angus — artists Juliet Peter and Jacqueline Fahey, gallery owner and art historian Elva Bett, and friend Christine Cole Catley — along with collector Sam Neill and other Angus enthusiasts (artists Grahame Sydney and Vita Cochrane, curators Tony Mackle, Peter Shaw, and Anna Miles), and presents the different eras and events in Angus' life in relationship to her paintings.

Artist and woman are made sense of in tandem rather than separately. And while the debate continues as to the importance of biography in understanding an artist's work, Angus' example supports the argument that artists' lives and personalities often inform their work — as this documentary shows. 

Mary-Jane Duffy is a writer, writing tutor and sometime art gallery director.