Ian Wedde
Dear Colin, Dear Ron: The selected letters of Colin McCahon and Ron O’Reilly by Peter Simpson (Te Papa Press, 2024), 528pp, $65
This is one of the most significant works of cultural history published in New Zealand, so congratulations to its editor Peter Simpson, publisher Te Papa Press, and a support crew acknowledged by Peter Simpson in his Preface, which is itself a lucid summary of the book’s exhaustive research and production methodologies.
Special acknowledgements must also go to Matthew O’Reilly—Ron O’Reilly’s son—who, with his sister Rachel, has contributed a sympathetic Afterword essay, entitled ‘Riffing Ron’; and to Colin McCahon’s grandson, Finn McCahon-Jones, whose essay ‘An Inherent View’, is a sensitive text that ends with the hope that ‘you explore these pages gently’.
My acknowledgement of the book’s significance comes with Finn’s hope in mind. The scrupulously documented letter texts dramatise a complex relationship between two men—one an ambitious artist and the other a scholarly collector and cataloguer—whose passions converge around the art of their time and, in particular, the art of Colin McCahon, but whose life situations, personal beliefs and voicings often differ. The cumulative momentum of the book’s organised content is impeccably orderly; the art historical accounting of art markets, exhibition venues and dealers, and shifts in taste is fascinating; the artist-led inventory of works-in-progress is revelatory and often accompanied by vivid sketches within the letters. Given the running commentary on works exhibited and sold over 40 years, and with 64 images, it is, in total, the next best thing to a personal catalogue-raisonné. But much of the book’s unconventional energy comes from the complex drama of its two voices.
Early in this substantial text (463 pages of correspondence, interleaved with the illustrations) there’s a short note from Colin McCahon (henceforward just Colin) to Ron O’Reilly (henceforward just Ron), 20 May 1946, that begins ‘Thanks for yours 12 pages no less. Has my last not arrived [?] Not that it matters much …’
A few weeks earlier, 14 March 1946, Ron had written forthright notes on several of Colin’s paintings, both enthusiastic (‘It [Annunciation Series] looks magnificent on the sitting room wall near the light switch.’) but also critical:
Don’t like Valley of Dry Bones. It is too obvious—unless of course I don[’]t see to spite myself, which may well be. Well I see a valley of dry bones and I am told that this is the valley of dry bones, but that doesn’t seem enough. The colour is pleasant but that in itself doesn’t seem enough either. I don’t start wondering about those bones—they are there and the figure that announces them bears to them—for all I can see—the same relationship that the butler does to the notable he announces.
Following this letter, on 9 April Colin had written tersely, ‘Please, has any letter from Nelson turned up for me [?] If so please post to me here. It[’]s my last pay from Weeks …’
Despite such twangs, the volume and generosity of Ron’s ongoing commentary and the energy of his practical advocacy and support for Colin’s work are extraordinary. Colin’s response is both pragmatic (getting works exhibited and sold) and appreciative of Ron’s passionate engagement with art, as well as his hospitality when Colin has enjoyed the ‘peace’ of the O’Reilly household. And yet it’s the differences between the two writers, not least Ron’s atheism and communist affiliations against Colin’s religious belief, that make these letters so dynamic in the ways they establish common ground despite their differences.
At the beginning of this edited correspondence (which contains over 360 separate letters) on 4 August 1944, there’s a long letter from Ron to Colin in which he responds to Colin’s (unpublished) letter laying out his reasons for preferring the ‘Christian goal’ to Ron’s joining the Communist Party. Ron’s letter is high-toned, and I doubt I’m alone in wondering how McCahon could humour this:
I do not dismiss your vision as hallucination, (though I of course do not entirely dismiss that possibility), because I have no doubt of your integrity or of the integrity of those like you. I do however think you are guilty of some ethical fallacies …
On 27 June 1948, Ron thanks Colin for the gift of ‘The Singing Women’ and follows this with a multi-page summary containing quotes from ‘A magnificent article by [John] Findlay in the latest issue of Mind. “Can God’s existence be disproved?”’
A few weeks later, ‘4 or 11 July’, Colin characteristically cuts to the chase: ‘Thanks for 2 letters. I have been working on a 6’ x 3’ landscape with day on the right & night on the left. It is finished at last & quite good. Just now I think it is.’ In the same letter he continues with a succinct summary of his falling out with Toss Woollaston, ending with ‘I don’t feel like a fight & he obviously does’. He closes abruptly with reference to Ron’s sale of his house: ‘Your position is not mine. Greetings, Colin.’
As the narrative continues, shaped less by chronological accretion than by an ongoing dramatic vibration, we become eavesdroppers on a complex relationship that developed over nearly 40 years between 4 August 1944 and November 1981. It comes with surprises. On 23 December 1948, Ron wrote to Colin, ‘I have been going almost regularly to church. I think it does do something for one (but a bit shamefaced still.)’ And over the next three years, while not resiling from his firm views on Colin’s work, and while his engagement with the art world’s dealers and markets becomes increasingly active on Colin’s behalf, Ron’s presence becomes less overbearing. He offers Colin books to read: ‘Augustine—Confessions. Hubert [Witheford] is very keen on it and it certainly is magnificent …’ (6 February 1949). Colin thanks Ron for the André Gide journals also sent (13 February 1949): ‘Have had about a week ago quite some days in bed with flu or something like that. So ground my way through great chunks of Mr Gide at an amazing speed. Hardly fair to the man I suppose.’
It seems to be Ron’s generosity rather than any perceived condescension that Colin responds to. Similarly, when Ron puts in a good word for the possibility of a joint Woollaston/McCahon exhibition in the face of Colin’s animosity, his tone is diplomatic: ‘And Toss? Could you bear a joint exhibition? I do think if you could and he could it would be worthwhile. Anyway, consider it all will you Colin?’ (3 May 1949)
Because Colin sometimes used letter-cards that made his texts seem abrupt, his shifts in mood and moments of depression often contrast with the equanimity of Ron’s letters. Colin: ‘Myself, I am doing nothing at all & don’t feel at the moment that I ever will again. But that will pass.’ (19 December 1949) In a long, post-depression letter of 4 or 5 February 1951 he writes, ‘Admittedly I have been going through a black spell.’ But his frustrations are in themselves signs of his relentless energy and impatience with the work of making art and organising its associated exhibition opportunities and tasks. For several years it involved difficulties finding a home and workplace. In the correspondence with Ron, we are aware of the sympathy and patience required of this staunch supporter.
The above offers only a cursory account of the Part I section of this book covering the period between 1944 and 1951. The depth of feeling and drama in the voicings of the letters remains complex over the years that follow. One measure of the first section’s range is the Notes that follow (similar Notes follow the two subsequent sections, 1953–1964 and 1966–1981). There are 465 Part I Notes that, when re-read as a running text, become a cumulative shadow narrative with vivid detail built up around relationships and situations not filled out in the actual letters. There are references to a great many artists, dealers, publishers and others that Colin and Ron were close to or dealing with. And letters other than Colin’s and Ron’s are referenced. An example picked at random is Note 217, which refers to Toss Woollaston’s letter to Ron in which Woollaston wondered whether ‘there might be a grain of truth in A.R.D. Fairburn’s criticism’—scathing criticism that had infuriated Colin and that Ron discussed in his letter to Colin of 26 May 1948; this Note also cross-references Jill Trevelyan’s Toss Woollaston: A life in letters (Te Papa Press, 2004).
Less in the main channel but adding to our sense of the peopled world in which these letters were written is Note 34, a detail added following the reference to an artwork: ‘Possibly Landscape from Woollaston’s Mapua, ink on paper, 1943, pc, cm0018590; The Woollastons’ Māpua house was on land provided by the orchardist Deci Wells.’ And so a generous person called Deci Wells enters the larger world in which these letters were written. It’s details like this that enrich that world as its borders expand over the next 30 years.
In brief: Part II: 1953–1964 deals with the period after Colin and family moved to Auckland and lived at first in the bushy hills of Titirangi (‘a large series of “Kauri” drawings …’) and subsequently in the inner-city suburb of Newton while he worked at Auckland Art Gallery. This was a transformative and highly productive period in his life, which included major works such as The Wake, which followed five months with Anne in the United States. They bought a clinker dinghy (Ron was jealous): ‘The children are brown as they ever have been, the garden flourishes—likewise Anne. And my painting—I’ve been most prolific here …’ (1 April 1954).
Ron had begun work in Christchurch at Canterbury Public Library, much of it involved with art. Both men were very busy, including with theatre productions: Colin disliked a Group show on the basis of its catalogue (28 November 1955); Ron did not agree—‘I think you are wrong about the Group’ (1 December 1955); there was a reconciliation with Woollaston—Colin notes ‘A letter from Toss—back in Auckland on Oct 6.’ (24 November [i.e. September] 1962) and a Woollaston—McCahon Retrospective at Auckland City Art Gallery in 1963.
Part III: 1966–1981: it’s now that the three parts of this history begin to read like a three-act drama. In the first, the key players and core storylines are established; the second involves consolidation and times of happiness and satisfaction; in the third, as well as dramatic moments of success and the expansion of Māori elements in his work, Colin’s alcoholism and related illnesses affect his world—‘Shure [sic], I’m not well if everybody tells me so then they must be right. Just because I don’t go to openings & so on and dig the garden & am not pouring out dozens of paintings and so on—the aim seems to be to push me round the bend.’ (5 July 1977)
Ron and Colin have a falling out over Ron’s inclusion of works from his own collection in the exhibition McCahon’s ‘Necessary Protection’. Colin wrote, ‘Would you please stop adding your collection to the necessary protection lot.’ (5 March 1978) Following an admonition from Colin, Ron apologises for mistaking ‘the starting point for the ‘Jet Off [sic for ‘Out’] from Ahipara/Muriwai’ series’.
There’s a five-month gap between Ron’s letter of 13 September 1978 and Colin’s undated but ‘marked received 10 February 1979’, which includes this: ‘I can’t understand what[’]s happening—I’m not me any more. I am becoming an historic image.’
Ron’s long final letter (16 November 1981) in this deeply moving drama includes an account of ‘the Parihaka show’ (Parihaka Centennial Exhibition & Art Auction, Govett-Brewster, October–November 1981). He writes, ‘The best work by far was not for sale—yours [Parihaka Triptych (1972)]. It is too strong for the others altogether.’ His admiration for and love of Colin McCahon are profoundly moving throughout these final exchanges.
The number of letters by Colin had diminished after 1979. The last one (5 June 1980) concludes with a backhanded homage to Mondrian: ‘—but the times they are a’changing. Hold hands when you cross the road kiddies & whose hand do you hold [?]’
I’m reminded of the artist John Reynolds’ extended series of paintings, texts and drawings, ‘Lost Hours’, when Colin was lost in the streets of Sydney and subsequently of Auckland—a tragic topography that is also an homage to Colin McCahon and his ongoing presence in changing times, as is this superb edition of letters between two devoted friends whose differences enriched their relationship and our experience of it in this fine book.
IAN WEDDE is the author of 16 collections of poetry, seven novels, two collections of essays, a collection of short stories, a monograph on the artist Bill Culbert, several art catalogues and a memoir. He has been co-editor of two poetry anthologies. His most recent book is The Social Space Of The Essay 2003–2023 (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2024).
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