Angel

Margaret Thompson studied at the Elam School of Art in the late 1930s and early 1940s, where she embraced the figurative realism taught by her tutor, Lois White. The economic hardships of the Great Depression had created divisions across New Zealand, and tensions were heightened by the onset of World War II. Students at Elam were actively engaged in addressing issues of the day, and Thompson was deeply involved in the nascent social realism movement. She was also influenced by the spiritual themes in White’s work, as seen in Thompson’s own painting Angel, 1944. White, along with Elam’s director AJC Fisher, emphasised a thorough practice of life drawing, tonal modelling, and a respect for Renaissance art. In Angel, the spiritual figure with expansive, feathery wings makes an upwards gesture with one hand that evokes the figures in the annunciation scenes by Leonardo da Vinci and Piero della Francesca, paintings of the archangel Gabriel telling Mary that she will give birth to Jesus In Thompson’s version of the ancient Christian story, the angel has a blunt fringe and contemporary appearance making this a decidedly modern interpretation.

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