Christopher Perkins' 1931 painting of Mount Taranaki, a response to New Zealand's distinctive clear lighting. Her landscapes came in a time when many people were concerned to create a distinctly New Zealand style, but Angus herself was not interested in defining a national style so much as her own style. Her paintings are clear, hard-edged and sharply-defined. In the 1930s and 1940s she painted scenes of Canterbury and Otago. One of the most famous of these is Cass (1936) in which she portrayed the bare emptiness of the Canterbury landscape using simplified forms and mostly unblended colours arranged in sections in a style remiscent of poster art. Cass was voted New Zealand's most-loved painting in a 2006 television poll. For a while, she lived next to the artist Leo Bensemann. Their adjacent flats became something of a hub of the local art scene and it is said that they spurred each other on in their art. It has been stated that Angus produced some of her finest pieces during this time including many portraits. She also produced comic art, signed with the name Rita Cook. Angus' pacifist beliefs can be seen in her art of the 1940s, when she avoided any kind of war work. Angus stated, "As an artist it is my work to create life and not to destroy it." She created three goddess images symbolizing peace of which "Rutu" is the most well known. In the early 1950s Angus spent some time travelling around New Zealand. One of her trips was to Central Otago, where she painted her well-known piece Central Otago. In 1955 Angus moved to Wellington and from this time her landscapes focused on Wellington and the Hawke's Bay which she visited regularly. Boats, Island Bay is one such iconic Wellington painting. She painted a large number of portraits, including "Head of a Maori Boy" (1938) and "Portrait (Betty Curnow)" (1942). She was able to capture the personality of her subjects, moving beyond a mere representation of their form. Angus also painted 55 self-portraits, particularly during her later years when she became afflicted with increasingly serious bouts of narcissistic disorder. In 1958, she won a New Zealand Art Societies' Fellowship and travelled to London to study at the Chelsea School of Art and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. She also visited Scotland and Europe and studied modern and traditional European art. Angus devoted much of