Alexandre Hogue 1898-1994There is quite a bit of publicity about Rita Angus at present because this year, being the centenary of her birth, Te Papa are publishing a biography and staging a large exhibition with a substantial catalogue.
Once I owned a Rita Angus landscape painting, although it was one which it seemed she had gone back to at some later stage and made some alterations, to the detriment of the work. There was definitely an area along the bottom that looked different.
Subsequently, I sold the painting to help subsidise my own work. I don't know where it is now.
It was a surprise to me many years later when, at the National Museum of American Art, in Washington DC, I walked into a room and there were walls covered with paintings that bore a close resemblance to hers. They had been painted by Alexandre Hogue, at the time, still alive and living in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I had not realised until that moment just how much her approach was part of an international style. It was an education for me.
