Hills from Annat (1946) by Douglas MacDiarmid

This tranquil little landscape was one of two Douglas MacDiarmid painted on a leisurely horse and cart holiday through the rolling farmland of the Canterbury Plains. World War II had just ended in the Pacific and he was soon to head off on a grand overseas adventure but first, the freedom of the road.

Christchurch Art Gallery bought the painting from the deceased estate of the original owner Albion Wright in 2011, shortly before the devastating earthquakes. It was sought out as part of the Norman Barrett Bequest, a legacy left to the gallery specifically to strengthen their collection of Canterbury paintings from the 1940s to the 70s.

When the gallery finally reopened at the end of 2015, Hills from Annat was hung in the exhibition ‘In the vast wilderness’, in company with other regional landscapes by Douglas’ old friends from his early painting days, Rita Angus, Leo Bensemann and Juliette Peter.

Annat barely rates a mention on maps. It’s a farming district near the foothills of the Southern Alps, 60 kilometres from Christchurch on the picturesque trans-alpine route over Arthur’s Pass to the West Coast. One of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it places that engaged Douglas at his slower pace. The area has hardly changed since 1946, except the highway is probably wider and certainly less dusty.

In correspondence with gallery curator Peter Vangioni, MacDiarmid observed:

“It was unexpectedly moving to hear you talk about Annat as a real place through which you’d passed. For me, it’s a luminous memory mark! The ideal cleanser of Air Force constraints. At no more than clip-clop pace it is possible to approach with peaceful observation, meditation merging as no motor vehicle will allow…I marvel now at the perilous innocence of the whole proceeding.

What Christchurch gave me of unique enrichment in my student years keeps me as sensitive to her fate as any close family.”

MacDiarmid also wrote a couple of poems from Annat, that he recorded specially for the gallery’s audio guide, to give exhibiting painters a voice. Listen to the poems below.