Rita Angus
(1908 - 1970) 
 

Henrietta Catherine Angus known as Rita Cook early in her career, was a New Zealand painter who, alongside Colin McCahon and Toss Woollaston, is regarded as one of the leading figures in twentieth-century New Zealand art. She worked primarily in oil and watercolour, and became known for her portraits and landscapes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Angus

Flight
1969
Oil on hardboard
60.7 × 60.2 cm
Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand
https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/43394?page=1&rtp=1&ros=1&asr=1&assoc=all&mb=c

 

In the early 1960s, Rita Angus was horrified to hear that thousands of graves would be shifted from Wellington’s Bolton Street Cemetery to make way for a new urban motorway. Angus was keenly aware of her Anglo-Scottish heritage and New Zealand’s 19th-century history, and saw both reflected in the colonial cemetery.
Angus visited the site regularly before and during the demolition, making careful records of specific headstones and inscriptions. A lifelong pacifist, she was drawn to a carved stone dove among the piled-up headstones at the demolition site. Angus sketched the dove in pencil, before including it in this work - her last completed painting.