Rita Angus: A New Madonna 1942–1951

Abstract

This article explores the ‘New Madonna’ in Rita Angus’s artwork in the 1940s and early 1950s. The New Madonna combines female independence and celibacy with sexuality
and motherhood. She develops from Angus’s position as a woman painter who lived and worked alone, and is expressed in three nudes and a number of goddess portraits which are discussed. The origins of the term ‘New Madonna’ and the interpretative possibilities it affords to Angus’s art are examined. These works allow Angus to inscribe herself with a value derived from being female. In order to offer insight into these portraits, Angus’s letters to the composer Douglas Gordon Lilburn are considered.