{{short description|New Zealand artist}} {{Use dmy dates|date=January 2020}} {{Use New Zealand English|date=May 2024}} {{Infobox artist | name = Anne Hamblett | birth_date = {{birth date|1915|10|11|df=yes}} | birth_place = Mosgiel, Otago, New Zealand | death_date = {{Death date and age|1993|12|30|1915|10|11|df=yes}} | death_place = Auckland, Auckland Region, New Zealand | spouse = Colin McCahon (1919–1987) | movement = Modernism | field = Painter }} '''Annie (Anne) Eleanor McCahon''' ''née'' Hamblett (11 October 1915 – 30 December 1993) was a New Zealand artist and illustrator. She was married to fellow artist Colin McCahon.
== Early life == Anne Hamblett was born in Mosgiel,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Anne Hamblett |url=https://findnzartists.org.nz/en/artist/6346/anne-hamblett |access-date=24 March 2024}}</ref> the daughter of the Reverend W. A. Hamblett and Ellen Hamblett (''née'' West).<ref>{{Cite web |title=Marriage search: Hamblett |url=https://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/Search/Search?Path=querySubmit.m%3fReportName%3dMarriageSearch%26recordsPP%3d30#SearchResults |access-date=24 March 2024}}</ref> She attended Otago Girls' High School in Dunedin and then studied at King Edward Technical College from 1934 to 1937. In her second year she was awarded a Callander Scholarship.<ref>{{Cite news |date=12 December 1934 |title=Technical High School |work=Evening Star |pages=10}}</ref> Her fellow students included Toss Woollaston, Rodney Kennedy, Doris Lusk, Len Castle, and Colin McCahon.<ref>{{Cite news |date=21 February 1987 |title=Obituary Mr R. C. Field |work=The Press (Christchurch) |pages=4}}</ref> Some of them, including Lusk, Woollaston and McCahon, would often make painting excursions into the countryside, cementing life-long friendships.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Milburn |first=Felicity |date=1 June 2016 |title=Doris Lusk: An Inventive Eye |url=https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/bulletin/184/doris-lusk-an-inventive-eye |access-date=24 March 2024}}</ref> Dunedin at the time was the centre for art in New Zealand, with Woollaston describing it as, "the most artistically enlightened place in New Zealand. A city that was looking at artists unheard of in Christchurch – Matisse, Picasso, Cézanne." He added that "the one quality that united all these painters was excitement."<ref>{{Cite book |title=Sage Tea: An Autobiography |publisher=William Collins |year=1980 |isbn=0002169827 |location=Auckland |publication-date=231 |pages=231}}</ref> In part this was thanks to a group of teachers who had arrived in New Zealand from the United Kingdom thanks to the La Trobe Scheme.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Sanderson |first=William |date=1996 |title=Rollo Arnold La Trobe |url=https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3l1/la-trobe-william-sanderson |access-date=24 March 2024 |website=Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand }}</ref> They included R. N. Field, J. D. Charlton Edgar and Gordon Tovey, who was the Technical College’s Director.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Caselberg |first=John |date=Autumn 1980 |title=Havens for Art Nelson, Dunedin and the Growth of Local |url=https://art-newzealand.com/15-havens/ |journal=Art Art New Zealand |issue=15}}</ref> In 1938, Hamblett was enrolled as an art major at the Dunedin Training College, where Ivy Copeland was lecturer in art.<ref>{{Cite Q|Q139922395}}</ref>{{Reference page|page=23}}
== Early work == Hamblett began exhibiting with the Otago Art Society soon after leaving art school. In 1938, two paintings were exhibited in a group show at the Wellington Sketch Club and described as 'outstanding' by the local newspaper: "Two oils by Anne Hamblett called for considerable attention. A landscape was an interesting study of farms and rolling hills. The picture carried well, colouring and arrangement being very good."<ref>{{Cite news |date=19 September 1938 |title=Wellington Sketch Club |url=https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19380919.2.133?end_date=31-12-1989&items_per_page=10&query=%22Anne+Hamblett%22&snippet=true&start_date=01-01-1920 |access-date=24 March 2024 |work=Evening Post |pages=18}}</ref> Doris Lusk, Mollie Lawn, and Anne Hamblett established a studio and exhibition space above the UFS Dispensary in Princes Street to offer each other support in painting and exhibiting. Hamblett continued to show regularly in the Otago Art Society exhibitions, often with great success. Her 1939 outing resulted in six sales.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Morton |first=Frances |date=November 2016 |title=The Power of Two: The Woman Behind Colin McCahon |url=https://www.metromag.co.nz/arts/art/the-power-of-two-the-woman-behind-colin-mccahon |journal=Metro}}</ref>
== Colin McCahon == Hamblett met Colin McCahon when he began studying at the King Edward Technical College in 1937. As art critic Wystan Curnow has noted, "It became customary for a group of young Dunedin painters and intellectuals to gather in summer at Māpua or elsewhere in the Nelson region to earn money picking fruit or tobacco, and to paint, read, listen to music and talk. [As well as] Woollaston, McCahon and Kennedy, the group included Patrick Hayman, Anne Hamblett, Doris Lusk, and Ron and Betty O'Reilly."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Curnow |first=Wystan |date=2018 |title=Salvation Army Aesthetics: the Politics of Colin McCahon's 'Early Religious Paintings' |journal=Reading Room |issue=8 |pages=8–29 |via=Auckland Art Gallery}}</ref> McCahon recalled meeting up with, "the 'superior and aloof' female students who somehow got away with smoking despite the 'no smoking' ban… later on I married one of the superior girls (first met and seen through a barrier of tobacco smoke and Brahms on a portable gramophone)."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=McCahon |first=Colin |date=December 1966 |title=Colin McCahon, 'Beginnings' |journal=Landfall |issue=180}}</ref> In 1939, Hamblett and a number of other artists, including Rodney Kennedy and Doris Lusk, removed their paintings from the annual Otago Art Society show in protest at McCahon's work being removed from the exhibition.<ref>{{Cite book |title=A Table of One's Own: The Creative Life of Anne McCahon |publisher=Te Uru: Waitakere Contemporary Art Gallery |year=2017 |isbn=9780994108692 |pages=36}}</ref> After the protest, the McCahon work was reinstated. Hamblett and McCahon grew closer, sharing friends and working on joint projects such as stage sets for a local production of the John Galsworthy comedy ''Windows'' with Rodney Kennedy.<ref>{{Cite news |date=1 November 1941 |title=Galsworthy Play |url=https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ESD19411101.2.18.7?end_date=31-12-1989&items_per_page=10&query=%22Anne+Hamblett%22&snippet=true&start_date=01-01-1920 |access-date=24 March 2024 |work=Evening Star (Dunedin) |pages=5}}</ref> Art historian Linda Tyler suggests that during the early war years, their closeness began to "manifest itself in their paintings in the form of cross-fertilisation of ideas and style." Tyler also suggested that Hamblett's "intellectual contribution to McCahon lasted all his life" and that in interviews with the family it became clear that he constantly asked for her advice and "respected her ''eye'' and her ability to make useful aesthetic criticism of his work."<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |title=Between the Lives: Partners in Art |publisher=Auckland University Press |year=2005 |isbn=978-1-869406998 |editor-last=Shepard |editor-first=Deborah}}</ref> The couple were married by Hamblett's father, the Rev Canon W. A. Hamblett, on 21 September 1942 at St Matthew's Church, Dunedin. Hamblett (hereafter Anne McCahon) was twenty-seven and McCahon was twenty-three.<ref>{{Cite news |date=3 October 1942 |title=Marriages |url=https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ODT19421003.2.2.3?end_date=31-12-1942&items_per_page=10&query=%22Hamblett%22&snippet=true&start_date=01-01-1942 |access-date=24 March 2024 |work=Otago Daily Times |pages=1}}</ref> That same year the McCahons moved to Pangatōtara near Motueka. The couple went on to have four children, two daughters and two sons: William, Catherine, Victoria, and Matthew.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.nzedge.com/legends/colin-mccahon/ | title=Colin McCahon The Luminary | publisher=NZedge | accessdate=27 November 2015}}</ref>
== Final exhibitions == Anne McCahon continued painting after her marriage, and her work was presented publicly on a number of occasions. These included:
*1942: in exhibition at the Suter Gallery, Nelson.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2 October 1945 |title=Art Exhibition |work=Nelson Evening Mail |pages=2}}</ref> *1943: September 1943's issue of ''Art in New Zealand'' included her 1940 portrait of Dunedin personality Sybil Henderson. *1944: Anne and Colin McCahon both showed at an Otago Art Society exhibition,<ref>{{Cite news |date=26 October 1944 |title=Otago Art Society |work=Evening Star, (Dunedin) |pages=9}}</ref> and in the same year collaborated on a series of drawings titled ''Pictures for Children'', which was shown at Modern Books in Dunedin and reviewed by ''Art in New Zealand''. This described the works as "the purest fun… lucky children indeed to get these pictures."<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Brown |first=Gordon H. |title=Colin McCahon: Artist |publisher=AH & AW Reed |isbn=0589014862 |location=Wellington, New Zealand |publication-date=1984 |pages=218}}</ref> Writer Martin Edmond later recalled seeing what he assumes was one of the unsold works hanging on his bedroom wall, it having been gifted to his parents.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Edmond |first=Martin |date=2020 |title=A Family Plot |url=https://doi.org/10.26686/jnzs.v0iNS31.6683 |journal=Journal of New Zealand Studies |pages=148–153|doi=10.26686/jnzs.v0iNS31.6683 |doi-access=free }}</ref> *1953: The McCahons worked together on a theatre production of Peer Gynt in Christchurch. Anne McCahon designed the costumes, and some of her drawings from this production are held in the Hocken Collections. Colin McCahon designed the sets.
The frequency of Anne McCahon’s exhibiting slowed as the years went on. While she was still painting in 1946,<ref>{{Cite news |date=9 April 1946 |title=Black and White |work=Otago Daily Times |pages=2}}</ref> it is generally agreed that her final known painting was ''The Park'' from 1945, a small oil on board featuring trees in a winter landscape.<ref name=":0" />
== Career as an illustrator == In 1945 Anne McCahon was invited by writer Peggy Dunningham to illustrate her book for children ''Three Brown Bears and the Manpower Man''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Reed Gallery Three Brown Bears |url=https://www.reedgallery.co.nz/exhibitions/tales-from-a-long,-bright-land/21#408844 |access-date=24 March 2024}}</ref> The book was positively reviewed, with Hamblett's illustrations being cited as "excellent".<ref>{{Cite news |date=15 December 1945 |title=Recent Books |work=Evening Post |pages=9}}</ref> This project was a precursor to a long period of illustrating for the ''School Journal''. This association began in 1951 while McCahon was still living in Christchurch and art for the ''School Journal'' was being edited by Roy Cowan. He commissioned Anne McCahon to contribute illustrations such as ''Timothy Tidy'' (written by Aileen Findlay),<ref>{{Cite web |title=Anne McCahon |url=https://www.archives.govt.nz/discover-our-stories/school-publications/artist-and-artworks-an-online-exhibition/anne-mccahon |access-date=24 March 2024 |website=School Publications}}</ref> ''The Obstinate Turnip'', and ''Apple Dumplings''<ref>{{Cite web |last=Austin |first=Nick |date=7 December 2020 |title=A life of art out of the limelight. |url=https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/arts/life-art-out-limelight |access-date=24 March 2024 |website=Otago Daily Times }}</ref> Her contributions (in 1955 Anne McCahon had over fifty illustrations published) continued over eight years but virtually ended when Cowan resigned as editor of the Journal. <ref>{{Cite book |last=O’Brien |first=Gregory |title=A Nest of Singing Birds: 100 Years of the New Zealand School Journal |date=2007 |publisher=Learning Media |isbn=9780790319636 |location=Wellington |pages=119}}</ref>
After a break at the time that the McCahons moved to Auckland in 1953, Anne McCahon resumed illustrating for the ''School Journal''. Her contributions included a number of covers, and continued until 1959, when Cowan stepped down as art editor. McCahon's final project was illustrating the story ''A Jackal Who Wouldn’t Work''.<ref name=":1" />
There are differing views on why Anne McCahon stopped painting and illustrating. While her marriage was not an easy one from the early days of poverty and itinerant living to meeting the demands of four children and a husband with a demanding full-time job and a long commute, most commentators agree with art historian Tony Green that "McCahon was… a lucky man in that he simply could not have achieved what he did without the career-long support of Anne (née Hamblett), his wife and also an artist."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Bell |first=Leonard |date=2020 |title=Mythologising McCahon: A Heretical View NS31 |url=https://doi.org/10.26686/jnzs.v0iNS31.6678 |journal=Journal of New Zealand Studies |pages=51–71|doi=10.26686/jnzs.v0iNS31.6678 |doi-access=free }}</ref>
== Life in Auckland == The McCahon family moved to Auckland in 1953 once Colin McCahon gained a job at the Auckland City Art Gallery and purchased a house at 67 Otitori Bay Road in Titirangi.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Bloom |first1=Marja |title=Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith |last2=Browne |first2=Martin |date=2002 |publisher=Craig Potton Publishing |isbn=0908802919 |pages=179}}</ref> The house provided a demanding environment. Artist Shannon Te Ao recalls of his time filming there, "on a rainy day in July… the elements turn against the architecture. It's impossible not to imagine how tough a setting this would have been for Colin, Anne, and their four children."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Te Au |first=Shannon |date=21 September 2019 |title=The Problematic Legacy of Colin McCahon |url=https://thespinoff.co.nz/art/21-09-2019/the-problematic-legacy-of-colin-mccahon |access-date=24 March 2024 |work=The Spinoff }}</ref> However, the house also provided a place for friends to meet in the weekends and became something of a magnet for many of the leading literary and art figures of the time.<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |title=Conservation |url=https://mccahonhouse.org.nz/about/conservation |access-date=24 March 2024 |website=McCahon House}}</ref>
Anne and Colin McCahon continued to share a passion for contemporary art, and when he travelled for four months to the United States to study art museums on behalf of the Auckland Art Gallery, Anne accompanied him. Their itinerary was intense. According to Colin McCahon's report to the Auckland City Council, they visited around 63 art galleries, 100 dealer galleries and private collections and met a number of artists.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Cooke |first=Ian Anthony |date=2015 |title=Art-related Encounters and Interactions: Contact and Exchange between New Zealand and the United States, 1955 to 1974 |url=https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/2292/27600/whole.pdf?sequence=2 |access-date=24 March 2024}}</ref> Gordon H. Brown illustrates Anne McCahon's enthusiasm and insight when he quotes her reflections on a Mark Rothko retrospective: "Well here we were in the thick of it, though while a retrospective exhibition is not likely to be new painting it certainly was to us. Colin was better prepared being the devotee of Art News that he is. Still the reality of a painting is quite different generally from that of a reproduction."<ref name=":2" />
The McCahon family moved to the central Auckland suburb of Grey Lynn in 1960, buying a house at 109 Crummer Road. Between 1978 and 1981, Anne started making ceramics, and had a kiln in the back garden of the family home.<ref name=":0" /> By the early 1980s Colin McCahon's health had deteriorated and he needed more support. Anne wrote letters to his dealers on his behalf,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Simpson |first=Peter |title=Colin McCahon: Is this the Promised Land? Vol2 1960–1987 |publisher=Auckland University Press |year=2020 |isbn=9781869409081 |pages=350}}</ref> and in 1984 accompanied him to the exhibition ''McCahon I Will Need Words'' at the Fifth Sydney Biennale. Colin McCahon died three years later.
== Re-evaluation == Anne McCahon died in 1993. A decade later, Linda Tyler,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Linda Tyler |url=https://profiles.auckland.ac.nz/l-tyler |access-date=24 March 2024}}</ref> Associate Professor of Museums and Cultural Heritage at the University of Auckland, began to drawn attention to her work as Anne Hamblett for the first time since the final exhibition in the 1940s. In 2016, Tyler curated ''A Table of One's Own: The Creative Life of Anne McCahon'' at Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery.<ref>{{Cite web |title=A Table of One's Own: The Creative Life of Anne McCahon |url=https://www.teuru.org.nz/whats-on/calendar/a-table-of-ones-own-the-creative-life-of-anne-mccahon/ |access-date=24 March 2024 |website=Te Uru Gallery}}</ref> The exhibition examined Hamblett’s paintings alongside her illustrations and ceramics. Tyler has also written extensively on Hamblett and her contribution to New Zealand art. As the exhibition’s researcher Jessica Douglas put it, "Despite the meaningful contribution made by Hamblett to Dunedin's regionalism, she has been unrecognised and ignored in New Zealand’s art history."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Douglas |first=Jessica |date=2018 |title=Through the lens of Anne McCahon: Mid-Twentieth-Century Female Artists in New Zealand |journal=The New Zealand Journal of Public History |volume=6 |issue=1}}</ref>
Further retrospectives and tributes followed. In 2020, ''Anne Hamblett, Early Works'' was shown at Michael Lett Gallery in Auckland.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Anne Hamblett |url=https://michaellett.com/exhibition/anne-hamblett/ |access-date=24 March 2024}}</ref> The following year, Julia Holderness's Dunedin Public Art Gallery installation ''The Studio'' was a response to the studio space shared by Lusk, Lawn, and Hamblett in Dunedin.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bambury |first=Grant |date=12 December 2021 |title='The Studio' in Ōtepoti/Dunedin |url=https://eyecontactmagazine.com/2021/12/holdernesss-the-studio-in-dunedin |access-date=24 March 2024 |website=EyeContact}}</ref>
Many of Colin and Anne's personal papers were archived by the Hocken Collections. In 2020, these were inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Aotearoa New Zealand Ngā Mahara o te Ao register.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://unescomow.nz/inscription/colin-and-anne-mccahon-papers |title=Colin and Anne McCahon Papers |website=Memory of the World Aotearoa New Zealand Ngā Mahara o te Ao |access-date=10 January 2025}}</ref>
== McCahon House and artists' residency == In 1999 the Waitakere City Council acquired the former McCahon family home in Titirangi with the intention of restoring it to its 1959 condition. Work began the same year, and on completion the house was gifted to the McCahon House Trust and opened to the public.<ref name=":3" /> In 2006, a new building to serve as a residence and studio for artists was opened next door to the McCahon house.<ref>{{Cite web |title=McCahon's Artist Residence |url=https://archinect.com/bossleyarchitects/project/mccahon-s-artist-residence |access-date=24 March 2024}}</ref> The original house is surrounded by large kauri trees, and is now a small museum dedicated to the McCahon family. The Trust hosts three artists at the house for three months each every year, and to date ({{as of|lc=y|March 2024}}) has had 52 artists in residence,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Alumni |url=https://mccahonhouse.org.nz/residency/all/ |access-date=24 March 2024}}</ref> with a number of them (including Tiffany Singh, Bepen Bhana, and Fiona Pardington) having made works that relate directly to Anne McCahon's connection with the house.<ref name=":0" />
==References== {{Reflist}}
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{{The Group NZ}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hamblett, Anne}} Category:1915 births Category:1993 deaths Category:New Zealand modern painters Category:People from Mosgiel Category:20th-century New Zealand painters Category:New Zealand women artists Category:People educated at Otago Girls' High School Category:People educated at King Edward Technical College Category:Artists from Dunedin Category:Dunedin College of Education alumni