Rounding a corner in the copy painting village of Da Fen in southern
China, we saw a startlingly familiar image. A copy from a postcard was being
made of Picasso's Pitcher, candle, and casserole, but our jolt of recognition
connected to an early Colin McCahon painting A candle in a dark room that we had first seen in the
late seventies.
One of the advantages of being in New Zealand is the easy access you
have to most parts of the art world. And that was how, thanks to being in the
public art museum business and writing the text for a book on contemporary
artists, we got to meet Colin McCahon a couple of times. He was very welcoming
and happy to talk with a couple of people who were pretty junior in the scheme
of things. At one stage he said, “You two are from Wellington, I’ll show you
something from my first Wellington exhibition. It’s under the bed” and dived
out of the room. The painting he brought back was a little worn but spruced up
it is now on loan to the Auckland Art Gallery, presumably by the McCahon
family.
Although the date is unclear on the painting itself, it was recorded as
1947 and listed as entry number 37 in the catalogue sheet when it was shown in
an exhibition of McCahon's paintings by Ron O’Reilly in the newspaper room of
the Wellington Public Library the following year. This date makes the 1945 Picasso painting almost certainly a
key influence. You can see the black triangular shape at the edge of Picasso’s
candle flame is enlarged and repeated in the McCahon work, the colour range is
startlingly similar and the candle and holder are obvious soul mates. It
certainly lit us up there on the streets of Da Fen.
Image: Left, a Da Fen painter’s copy of Picasso’s Pitcher, candle, and
casserole (the Picasso original is in the
collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris)
and right, Colin McCahon’s A candle in a
dark room currently on loan to the Auckland Art Gallery.
