28 July 2009: Angus biography wins Montana Book Awards medal

Staff at the National Library and Alexander Turnbull Library extend their warmest congratulations to Wellington author and art curator Jill Trevelyan, who has won the 2009 non-fiction award at the Montana Book award for her biography of celebrated New Zealand artist Rita Angus. Trevelyan's research for the biography drew extensively on collections held at the Alexander Turnbull Library.

Judges praised Rita Angus: An Artist's Life as a "treasure", saying "Trevelyan's writing is elegant and lucid and the book's scholarship is exemplary."

It was while researching another award-winning publication - Toss Woollaston: A Life in Letters, 2004 - at the Alexander Turnbull Library that Trevelyan came across a collection of 400 letters written by Angus to composer Douglas Lilburn over a period of 40 years. These letters, which entered the Library's collections after Lilburn's death, provided a fresh insight into Angus's early life.

The Alexander Turnbull Library holds a significant collection of Angus's correspondence, diaries and manuscripts, as well as a number of the artist's paintings and sketchbooks. Angus's Landscape with Sea (1953), on loan from the Angus family to the Turnbull Library, is part of the Te Papa travelling exhibition 'Rita Angus: Life & Vision', co-curated by Trevelyan and William McAloon, which opens at the Auckland Art Gallery on 1 August.