48
COLIN MCCAHON - A Poem of Kaipara Flat No.15
Estimate:
$150,000 - $200,000
Passed
Live Auction
IMPORTANT & RARE ART
ARTIST
COLIN MCCAHON (1919 - 1987)
Size
102 x 69 cm
Description
Watercolour and pastel on paper,
Catalogue Number cm000459
Signature
Signed & inscribed A Poem of Kaipara Flat 15 & dated 1971
Provenance
Private Collection, Auckland
Literature
This luminous watercolour and pastel was painted in 1971, the year that, at the age of 51, McCahon left his teaching job at Elam School of Fine Art in Auckland to became a full-time painter. He told his Wellington dealer Peter McLeavey: This business of living off painting is tough.So far–so good–but I’ve got to keep it up or Anne and I starve. (Peter Simpson, Colin McCahon, Volume Two: Is This the Promised Land, AUP 2020, p. 149).
His new freedom led to an immediate outpouring of colourful watercolours – more than 50 were completed that year – mostly of scenes near Muriwai Beach (where he had a large studio) and other places such as Helensville and Kaipara Flats, both within easy driving distance. What sets these works apart is the variety, intensity and vibrancy of their colour, in startling contrast to the predominance of black and white in much of his previous work including the biblical text and Maori language paintings of 1969 and 1970. McCahon explained: All this colour & fun is a direct result of leaving the school (Ibid.). Many were gathered together in three exhibitions: View from the top of the cliff at McLeavey’s in Wellington in April, New Paintings at Dawson’s Gallery, Dunedin, in August, and the opening exhibition at Osbourne Galleries in Auckland in October.
Poems of Kaipara Flat is one of several sub-series within this body of work; others were called View from the top of the cliff, Helensville, Muriwai, Ahipara and Kaipara Flat – Written. Kaipara Flats is a rural area on the shores of Kaipara Harbour about an hours drive north of Muriwai. In a note for the Dunedin show McCahon called it a shockingly beautiful area – I do not recommend any of this landscape as a tourist resort. It is wild and beautiful; empty and utterly beautiful ... The light and sunsets here are appropriately magnificent. The flat or gently undulating land and huge skies encouraged, as in this work, lyrical colouristic outpourings sometimes reminiscent of J.M.W. Turner.
Poems of Kaipara Flat is one of the most numerous of the sub-series, including at least 18 numbered items. What McCahon meant by the title: A poem ... is not entirely clear. It is obviously metaphorical rather than literal. He was an avid reader of and even an occasional writer of poetry, and once described himself as a frustrated poet. His favourite poet (among many) was Gerard Manley Hopkins. His occasional appropriation of the term ‘poem’ for paintings probably simply reflects his enthusiasm for poetry and his desire to attach it to things that he loved and was moved by; perhaps, too, the recurrent horizontals in these paintings are broadly reminiscent of lines or stanzas of poetry.
This painting, No. 15, is dominated by the glorious, luminescent, golden, sun-lit cloud, manifesting wonderfully subtle variations of colour from bright yellow through to various shades of brown depicted with a rich variety of brush-strokes which occupies the top half of the painting. The same golden glow permeates the gently rolling landscape below, separated by a zone of white, and animated with linear scribbles of blue and green probably applied with a pastel crayon. McCahon demonstrates virtuoso skill with the brush and a subtle understanding of the behaviour of colour and light. Nothing is overstated or laboured; the work seems spontaneously alive with the joy of painting.
Peter Simpson
His new freedom led to an immediate outpouring of colourful watercolours – more than 50 were completed that year – mostly of scenes near Muriwai Beach (where he had a large studio) and other places such as Helensville and Kaipara Flats, both within easy driving distance. What sets these works apart is the variety, intensity and vibrancy of their colour, in startling contrast to the predominance of black and white in much of his previous work including the biblical text and Maori language paintings of 1969 and 1970. McCahon explained: All this colour & fun is a direct result of leaving the school (Ibid.). Many were gathered together in three exhibitions: View from the top of the cliff at McLeavey’s in Wellington in April, New Paintings at Dawson’s Gallery, Dunedin, in August, and the opening exhibition at Osbourne Galleries in Auckland in October.
Poems of Kaipara Flat is one of several sub-series within this body of work; others were called View from the top of the cliff, Helensville, Muriwai, Ahipara and Kaipara Flat – Written. Kaipara Flats is a rural area on the shores of Kaipara Harbour about an hours drive north of Muriwai. In a note for the Dunedin show McCahon called it a shockingly beautiful area – I do not recommend any of this landscape as a tourist resort. It is wild and beautiful; empty and utterly beautiful ... The light and sunsets here are appropriately magnificent. The flat or gently undulating land and huge skies encouraged, as in this work, lyrical colouristic outpourings sometimes reminiscent of J.M.W. Turner.
Poems of Kaipara Flat is one of the most numerous of the sub-series, including at least 18 numbered items. What McCahon meant by the title: A poem ... is not entirely clear. It is obviously metaphorical rather than literal. He was an avid reader of and even an occasional writer of poetry, and once described himself as a frustrated poet. His favourite poet (among many) was Gerard Manley Hopkins. His occasional appropriation of the term ‘poem’ for paintings probably simply reflects his enthusiasm for poetry and his desire to attach it to things that he loved and was moved by; perhaps, too, the recurrent horizontals in these paintings are broadly reminiscent of lines or stanzas of poetry.
This painting, No. 15, is dominated by the glorious, luminescent, golden, sun-lit cloud, manifesting wonderfully subtle variations of colour from bright yellow through to various shades of brown depicted with a rich variety of brush-strokes which occupies the top half of the painting. The same golden glow permeates the gently rolling landscape below, separated by a zone of white, and animated with linear scribbles of blue and green probably applied with a pastel crayon. McCahon demonstrates virtuoso skill with the brush and a subtle understanding of the behaviour of colour and light. Nothing is overstated or laboured; the work seems spontaneously alive with the joy of painting.
Peter Simpson
Exhibited
1971 By Invitation: Opening Exhibition
Osbourne Galleries, Auckland 4/10/1971 - 10/1971
