Cass (painting)

In the mid-1930s Rita Angus was in her 20s and working as a freelance commercial artist, writing and illustrating stories in the Press Junior supplement, from a small studio in Christchurch's Chancery Lane. She was part of a network of independent women working in the arts, including Olivia Spencer Bower, Louise Henderson, cellist Valmai Moffett, and her friend Jean Stevenson, editor of the Press Junior. (1936) Angus either painted or began five works as a result of the trip. Two watercolours, both called Mountains, Cass, depicted the mountains north-west of the settlement with a musterer's hut in the foreground. One, painted on site, is in Te Papa's collection, and the other, completed later in her studio, is in the Christchurch Art Gallery. Two, both titled Mountain Biological Station, Cass, depicted the field station at which she stayed with a train passing in the background, in watercolour and in oils. == Description ==

Like the rest of her and Louise Henderson's Cass paintings, this work emphasises the human intrusion into the high country landscapes: huts, trains, radiata pine trees, and telegraph poles. Unlike Henderson, Angus leaves the telegraph lines off her poles, presumably to prevent them interfering with the composition. Angus later wrote that "Cass at that time appeared as a 'break away' from the academic, but resulted from an intense interest in the old masters, through mathematics, e.g. geometry," and the geometric composition of the painting is strong, with vertical telegraph pole and doors contrasting with the diagonal lines of mountains, roof and shadows. Unlike those paintings, which depicted empty wildernesses, Cass is a landscape full of, and transformed by, human presence. but Christopher Perkins and Rata Lovell-Smith have stronger affinities with her work. Her linear, crisp style contrasted with the Impressionistic landscapes of the Canterbury school, which A.R.D. Fairburn lambasted for making the "great crouching tigers" of the Southern Alps resemble "Sunday icecream". Although she had separated from her husband Alfred Cook in 1934, under New Zealand law amicable divorce required three years of separation. Angus continued to use the name "Rita Cook", under which she had established her reputation as an artist, until 1947, eight years after her divorce. == Reception and influence ==

Cass was exhibited for the first time at the Canterbury Society of Arts exhibition in March 1937, along with the studio watercolour Mountains, Cass and one other work. None of the three were chosen to illustrate the CSA catalogue. In the Department of Internal Affairs' 1945 Introduction to New Zealand, an illustration of Cass was included and the author noted that "some of Rita Cook's landscapes have an arresting simplicity; her Gas Works and Cass show her grasp of something truly indigenous." Cass's influence has led several artists to create responses: • Cass (1986), a diptych by Julian Dashper pairing a photograph of the railway station with an interpretation in pastels, and Cass Altarpiece (1986), a large oil painting by the same artist • Cass (2004), a colour photograph by Peter Peryer • CASS (2012), a spray-painted interpretation by Christchurch artist André Hemer, part of a 29 September – 22 October 2012 Christchurch Art Gallery exhibition of the same name containing over 50 versions of the Angus painting. == Selected exhibitions ==

1937: Canterbury Society of Arts Annual Exhibition, Christchurch. This was the first time Cass was exhibited publicly. Over the summer of 1939–40 the Centennial Exhibition was visited by 2,870,995 people. 1959: The Land and the People, USSR. In response to a 1958 touring exhibition of Soviet art, Eric McCormick curated a selection of 100 New Zealand works, including Cass, which were shown at the Pushkin Fine Art Museum in Moscow, the Hermitage, and Tashkent. 1982: Rita Angus, National Art Gallery (now Te Papa Tongarewa). This exhibition curated by Ron Brownson, Anne Kirker, and Janet Paul toured New Zealand. Brownson noted in his essay, "The name Cass printed on the station anchors all representation to physical surface. The place is labelled as on a map and determines one's initial recognition of the picture." 1991: Pacific Parallels: artists and the landscape in New Zealand, The New Zealand-United States Art Foundation and the San Diego Museum of Art. Curated by Charles Eldredge, this exhibition toured seven venues in the United States. In Eldredge's discussion of Rita Angus he places Cass alongside the work of American painter Grant Wood, noting "the telling juxtaposition of present-day subjects and activities with the land’s traditions (alpine or agrarian) bespeaks a similar celebration of time and history." 2008: Rita Angus: Life and Vision, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Curated by William McAloon and Jill Trevelyan, this toured the metropolitan centres in New Zealand. Peter Vangioni's essay on the Cass works notes that "Cass remains an unromanticised vision of the landscape – a focus on what makes the region unique." although the exhibition at Te Papa went ahead. A scaled-down version toured regionally in New Zealand. == The station ==

The station depicted in Cass is a simple two-room building constructed in 1911 with weatherboard sides and a corrugated iron roof. It was built when Cass was the terminus of the Midland Line, before the railway pushed on to Otira to cross the Southern Alps. At the time Angus painted it a larger building and a refreshments room had been removed, but a goods shed was still present. but in the late 1990s it was repainted a uniform ochre red (possibly to more closely resemble the Angus painting), a colour used by museums to paint Māori carvings, known as "Museum Red". In the early 2020s it was repainted tan with red trim. In 2024 KiwiRail erected a branding sign alongside the Cass railway station building. The move was greeted with protest, including from actor Sam Neill who was quoted as saying, “Which idiot did this? Come on. Put your hand up!". KiwiRail removed the sign, commenting that they were great admirers of the Angus's painting, holding it in “the highest regard”. File:Cass Station Goldneys 1984.jpg|1984 File:Cass Station Susannah Donovan.jpg|circa 1999 File:Cass Station.jpg|2016 File:Cass Environs (Morning) MRD 05.jpg|2024 == NFT ==

In 2022 Cass was offered for sale in an edition of 12 NFTs by the New Zealand company Glorious. The painting was displayed cropped at 4k resolution on 64" TV accompanied by a composition from jazz musician Quentin Angus, great nephew of Rita Angus.The NFT in the edition reserved for auction was sold by the International Art Centre on 17 March 2022 for $13,085. The Christchurch Art Gallery took pains to distance itself from the NFT sale, which was arranged with the Australia-based Rita Angus Estate, and stated it "has not authorised, endorsed or approved the creation, marketing or sale of that or of any other NFT, and that neither the Gallery nor the Christchurch City Council is in any way affiliated with the company behind the promotion and sale of the NFT." == References ==