Te Tihi o Kahuhura and Sky V (The Citadel of the Rainbow God)

Te Tihi o Kahuhura and Sky V (The Citadel of the Rainbow God)

William Alexander Sutton was an artist and educator based in Ōtautahi Christchurch and a key figure of twentieth-century landscape painting in Aotearoa me Te Waipounamu. Throughout his life, Sutton aspired to apprehend what he referred to as the ‘nature of things’ in the environment around him, and he pursued this understanding via processes of close observation, study and art-making. Whether walking in the high country or immersed in self-directed studies in his studio, garden or personal library, Sutton sought an intimate awareness of the patterns and forces intrinsic to his local ecology.

In 1978, the then-director of the Govett-Brewster, Ron O’Reilly, purchased Sutton’s Te Tihi o Kahukura and Sky V for the gallery’s collection. The purchase was arranged following Sutton’s exhibition Te Tihi o Kahukura and Sky at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, which comprised ten paintings, each depicting a different view and weather pattern, or mood of a rocky outcrop high on Te Pātaka-o-Rākaihautū Banks Peninsular, above Ōtautahi Christchurch. At the time, this prominence was known in the parlance of Pākehā as Castle Rock, and to Ngāi Tahu as Te Tihi o Kahukura.

At the time of the original exhibition, reviewers saw little more than a return to neo-romanticism, albeit exceptionally realised, occasionally making note of the glimmer of El Greco’s influence. Yet by privileging what—to them—seemed obvious about Sutton’s visual language, they elided the very thing that could be seen to be most unique about this series in Sutton’s oeuvre. Of a lifetime spent observing and responding to the whenua of Waitaha Canterbury, in this one instance, Sutton chose to restore the Ngāi Tahu name for the object of his study.

— Excerpt, Elle Loui August, “Te Tihi o Kahuhura,” in Several degrees of attention: thinking with the collection, 2022. Adapted for Collection Online, 2023.