Story: Gender inequalities

Even with family and professional support, women artists were often sidelined. Painter Rita Angus was helped by her well-off family. She went to art school and became part of The Group, a set of Christchurch artists whose exhibitions represented the latest trends in New Zealand art. However, Angus’s work was not well understood in her lifetime and only became widely appreciated in the 1980s. This is her 1938 portrait of Fay and Jane Birkinshaw. Fay was to become well-known as the author Fay Weldon.