Private Collection, London Purchased from John Leech Gallery, 1998 Private Collection, Auckland

McCahon references the oldest suburb on the lower flanks of Christchurch’s Port Hills. The first houses were built in the 1890s and over the years Cashmere became fashionable with a slightly bohemian reputation.

Early in 1948 Colin McCahon moved to Christchurch where he boarded with Doris Lusk and her husband Dermot Holland. During that time he worked as a gardener. With his friend R N O’Reilly as organiser, McCahon’s work was exhibited at the Wellington Public Library during February, then at the Lower Hutt Municipal Public Library. The primitivism in McCahon’s modernist approach caused lively debate.

He had expected the traditional element in his religious subjects to carry his meaning, but the general lack of comprehension, and denigration by critics such as A R D Fairburn, temporarily disheartened him. In September McCahon showed a different selection at the Dunedin Public Library. Late in 1948 he rented a house in Christchurch, and again the family were together. In Wellington, in August 1949, Helen Hitchings’s gallery mounted a joint exhibition of works by McCahon and Woollaston; a selection was shown in Auckland later that month.

REFERENCE
Colin McCahon Online Catalogue www.mccahon.co.nz no: cm001490