McCahon letters revealed in new book
This small sample of the correspondence collected in the book Dear Colin, Dear Ron: The Selected Letters of Colin McCahon and Ron O’Reilly by Peter Simpson (Te Papa Press) dates from 1950, a time when O’Reilly was working at the Lower Hutt Public Library and living in Heretaunga, and McCahon was living, working and painting in Linwood in Christchurch.
The scholarship referred to was provided by the combined arts societies for an artist to travel overseas. McCahon had asked O’Reilly to support his application but then decided not to apply.
The business venture mentioned was Victoria Gallery, a framing and jewellerymaking business in which McCahon was briefly involved with Dermot Holland themes, (husband of painter Doris Lusk).
The ‘regained house’ refers to a recently acquired rental for McCahon’s family after a period of forced separation.
The McCahon paintings described, all figurative representations of biblical themes, are Easter Morning (1950) and The Maries at the Tomb (1950), both now in Auckland Art Gallery, and Crucifixion: the apple branch (1950, National Gallery of Australia).
McCahon had proposed that O’Reilly should write an essay on his work for Landfall to accompany some reproductions of his paintings, but the editor, Charles Brasch, chose to write the essay himself. McCahon also refers to an exhibition of his work at Helen Hitchings Gallery (Wellington’s and New Zealand’s first dealer gallery) organised by O’Reilly in July-August 1949. Betty was O’Reilly’s first wife and mother of his children. – Peter Simpson
Palmer Cresc., Heretaunga 12 April 1950
Dear Colin,
I thought I would find time over Easter to answer you but it slid past in pleasant inactivity, mainly because a party on Saturday night went on till 5.30am. A welcome break. I think you should try for the scholarship, to try hard too. Even if you don’t get it it will be good experience not only for you: it doesn’t matter all that much if you don’t get it but it is still worth bidding for, but also for the committee who presumably are not 100% reactionary. If Anne [Colin’s wife] is content that you should go then try to go. At least that is how I feel about it but it obviously depends on what you feel you could get out of such a trip, as against what you will lose from a regained family, house, the new business venture, the friendships of Christchurch. I think you would gain on balance but I am not intimately concerned. I have always felt the desire to go abroad, but, like you, not so sufficiently that I have ever conscientiously planned how I could do this. I do think you are more capable of absorbing the good things of Europe than any other artist I know (or anyone else either).
I am sorry you felt the Easter Morning needed altering: no doubt there are things one is trying for which are not achieved to satisfaction: however I wonder if one ever does achieve them by long labour on the same work. That picture had a magnificent feeling: the quiet movement of the women, the expectancy[,] the fulfilment, the lovely early morning light ... One doesn’t become a good cataloguer if one’s teacher allows mistakes to be amended by rubbing out but [only if he or she] insists on a fresh card for each minute error: after a painful while one no longer makes errors. Painting is [not] quite analogous of course: but the progressive enrichments of one picture are one thing, the sweat to get something just right, if it isn’t just a small part of the picture, if it involves a substantial repainting of the parts, with which one was initially pleased . . . I am not sure. I know in writing the method of fresh starts and fresh starts and fresh starts can be just as much an undisciplined floundering as mucking about with a defective draft … What you do is so good, so good, it doesn’t seem to
me to matter much if you leave a painting which is not quite what you want: the development goes on so richly.
Pictures are like women, one doesn’t overcome their recalcitrance by fighting them. One grins and goes on with one[’]s business …
Never mind about Landfall – I should have liked to be asked, though I had a sort of chance to do it before: I don’t feel yet confident of my ability to do you justice, it is probably just as well someone else is doing it, and it may provoke me to clarify my own ideas about your art.
Betty send[s] her love to you, to Anne. All of mine. Ron
From Colin McCahon 9 Barbour Street, Linwood, July [?] 1950
Dear Ron,
Many thanks for your letter. My slowness in answering is through indecision about the Scholarship. But have now decided against. I would like a year away – not 2 & with no obligations to supply good character references & so on … I don’t really feel ready. Perhaps I never will – a new view is developing & I don’t want to be disturbed in it. I have dispelled some of the darkness at last.
About repainting, I don’t know, but I think Picasso is right that nothing is lost, the destroyed discovery reappears in a new and better form. The Easter Morning is certainly better. The three women remain – the alterations are to the angel[;] he has been enlarged & the landscape lowered & the colour gone from blue to red[;] there is now a warmth as well as early morning coolness & a less cramped appearance to the whole picture. (I hope this is not just a justification for my method.)
But now from that work came the new work with the darkness gone[,] all done with great speed & certainty & quite an achievement – at last & a landscape – a small thing[;] relaxation after the other[,] but it has this lightness too. The first another crucifixion with a division into two parts. The crucifixion on the left with skulls piled in the front & a very simple & beautiful landscape behind with Mary in the bottom left corner. The right division has a heavy laden branch of apples supported by a forked pole, a landscape of hills[,] a large head of a man & a boy.
I am going to have something for an exhibition soon. This time something new. The [Helen] Hitchings show was pretty dull. What I do want is a few weeks at Oamaru to look at that landscape. The Hutt Valley now seems dark – or I remember it from the dark times. It can wait. The business venture has kept me from painting this week. Salesmen around all talking of money money money I am sick of it. I want it as much as any but don’t want to discuss ways of making more.
Greetings to all. Colin
Extract from Dear Colin, Dear Ron by Peter Simpson published by Te Papa Press. Out now in all good bookstores. $65