Mangōnui

During the winter of 1953, Rita Angus visited her friends Roy and Joyce Milligan at Mangōnui in Te Tai Tokerau Northland. She subsequently exhibited Mangōnui-related works with The Group in Ōtautahi. In December, she travelled north again and decided to move to Mangōnui permanently. By October 1954, she was living there in a seaside cottage, preparing a vegetable garden, and making watercolour studies of the surrounding landscape. Plans to purchase a property ultimately fell through. She left Te Tai Tokerau in April 1955 and went to Te Whanganui-a-Tara, where she stayed with family and friends, before buying a cottage in Thornton with proceeds from the sale of her property in Clifton, Ōtautahi.