8 Mar 2020

Painter Anne Hamblett - overshadowed no longer

From Standing Room Only, 12:44 pm on 8 March 2020

When your husband is one of New Zealand's most famous painters, it's always going to be hard not to be overshadowed.

Anne Hamblett was married to Colin McCahon.  But a new exhibition is a reminder that she was also an important artist in her own right, although she gave up painting to raise her family and to support her husband during the ups and downs of his career.

Between the 1950s and 70s Anne illustrated stories for the New Zealand School Journal, and in her 70s she took up pottery.

A new exhibition includes work painted when Anne Hamblett lived in Dunedin where she helped set up an all women's art gallery in 1939, along with Doris Lusk and Mollie Lawn.

Anne and Colin's daughter Victoria Carr is one of the people who've contributed early works by Anne for the show at Auckland's Michael Lett Gallery. 

Lynn Freeman talks with Victoria, and also with the curator of Early Works by Anne Hamblett, Associate Professor Linda Tyler.
 
Early Works opens at the Michael Lett Gallery in Auckland on Wednesday.