Working alongside her friends Louise Henderson and Julia Scarvell in the high country of Te Waipounamu, Rita Angus made sketches for this now-famous view of the small railway station at Cass. Though it went unsold at its first exhibition, she came to value it highly, seeing a clarity and truthfulness in her sharply focused treatment of the scene. As she later recalled: “[T]hose days of clear blue green skies, sun setting behind the dark hills, cold shadows … They were happy days. I long for a later return into the mountains. How little did I think then … that Cass would come to have any meaning to the painter.”

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )