Colin McCahon

McCahon married fellow artist Anne Hamblett (1915–1993) in 1942 at St. Matthew's Church, Dunedin.

As a wedding present, McCahon and Hamblett received a book by C. A. Cotton, The Geomorphology of New Zealand.

This book proved to have an influence on his art.

As McCahon relied on seasonal work, his wife returned to live with her parents.

Over the next five years, their time together was intermittent.

The couple had four children – two daughters and two sons: William, Catherine, Victoria and Matthew.

Colin John McCahon (1August 1919 – 27May 1987) was a prominent New Zealand artist whose work over 45 years consisted of various styles, including landscape, figuration, abstraction, and the overlay of painted text.

Along with Toss Woollaston and Rita Angus, McCahon is credited with introducing modernism to New Zealand in the mid-20th century.

He is regarded as New Zealand's most important modern artist, particularly in his landscape work.

McCahon was born in Timaru on 1 August 1919 the second of three children of Ethel Beatrice Ferrier and her husband John Kernohan McCahon.

He spent most of his childhood in Dunedin, although his family lived in Oamaru for one year.

He showed an early interest in art, influenced by regular visits to exhibitions and the work of his maternal grandfather, photographer and painter William Ferrier, which hung in the family home.

He attended the Maori Hill Primary School and Otago Boys' High School, which he called: "the most unforgettable horror of my youth".

At the age of 14, convinced he wanted to be an artist, McCahon took Russell Clark's Saturday-morning art classes to learn the fundamental skills of painting.

Visits to an exhibition by Toss Woollaston, whose landscapes, "clean, bright with New Zealand light, and full of air", also inspired him to become a painter.

McCahon supported himself in the late 1930s with a stint of working in a touring variety show, stage scenery painting, and fruit picking.

Some of these jobs were undertaken during his voluntary service for the state during World War II.

At the beginning of World War II, McCahon had initially tried to enlist for military service after deciding that the defeat of fascism was a global necessity – even from his pacifist standpoint.

He was rejected from active service due to an enlarged heart.

McCahon later attended the Dunedin School of Art (now known as Otago Polytechnic) from 1937 to 1939, where his teacher Robert Nettleton Field proved to be an inspirational influence.

After leaving Otago, McCahon attended King Edward Technical College Art School as a part-time student.

He first exhibited his work at the Otago Art Society in 1939.

His painting Harbour Cone from Peggy’s Hill was considered too abstract and was excluded from the Otago Art Society's exhibition, despite a rule entitling each member to submit one work.

The society's conventions of good taste were challenged by McCahon's modernist style, which reduced the volcanic cones of the Otago Peninsula to a topographic series of bare, almost monochromatic forms.

The protests of other young artists, who withdrew their works in sympathy, forced the society to relent and display the work.

In September 1940 and November 1943, he was guest exhibitor with The Group show in Christchurch.

Between 1940 and 1950, McCahon was commissioned by the Department of Education to produce an illustration for the New Zealand School Journal.

This illustration is now held at the Archives New Zealand.

Later, leaving his family at home, he travelled around the South Island for seasonal work, which subsequently led to his artwork reflecting the places where he travelled, particularly the Nelson region.

McCahon's first mature works, religious paintings and symbolic landscapes, such as The Angel of the Annunciation, Takaka: Night and Day, and The Promised Land, were produced in the years immediately after the war.

During this time, a notable portrait of McCahon was painted by Doris Lusk.

In the 1940s, words began to appear in his work often resulting in public criticism.

McCahon felt the directness of words could help, provide a 'way in' to his images, a long tradition within painted images, especially in religious art.

During 1944, McCahon collaborated with his wife producing watercolours collectively called Pictures for Children. In 1940, he had a small exhibit in Wellington and produced his first commissioned work, Otago Peninsula.

McCahon began the first of his early religious paintings, I Paul to you at Ngatimoti, in 1946 in Nelson.

These works depicted events from Christ's life in a New Zealand setting.

McCahon was never a member of a church, but acknowledged that religious questions were central to his work.

He became a member of The Group in 1947 and contributed work regularly until its demise in 1977.

In 1947, he worked as a labourer, and in 1948 worked as a gardener in Christchurch.

His friend R. N. O'Reilly organised an exhibit at the Wellington Public Library February 1947, then at the Lower Hutt Municipal Public Library.