The fragmented forms and sharp lines of Pangatotara Landscape 2 clearly indicate the influence of artists such as Cézanne on Colin McCahon. The work was made in the summer of 1943 during which time McCahon and his new wife Anne harvested tobacco together in Pangatotara. The painting shows McCahon’s keen interest in, and knowledge of, Cubism, through his experimentation with the representation of forms. This is McCahon’s early modernist approach to landscape prior to the signs and symbols for which he is most readily recognised today. As the eye darts between the jagged lines of the hills, trees and road, the mind is comforted by a certain level of harmony created by its composition and earthy palette of colours. The Pangatotara landscapes are an amalgamation of experimental forms and tradition that present to the viewer, as Tony Green discusses in the catalogue for the 1988 Gates and Journeys exhibition, ‘a new yet familiar view of nature’. Rather than simply emulating the Cubist style of seeking out new realities through experimenting with form and perspective, McCahon was driven to unearth timeless truths. McCahon’s interest in revealing the innate qualities of the land led to the blending of this modern technique and a more traditional approach to landscape. Not all elements of Cubism are adopted in Pangatotara; although McCahon uses simplified forms and bold lines, a specific perspective is maintained and the gradual tonal changes of colour pull the painting back into a space that sits between the traditional landscape canon and a fully realised Cubist work. This choice of maintaining some elements of nature’s reality, the single perspective and natural tones, show his intention did not lie in creating a new reality, but to use a new technique to serve his own artistic aim. While stripping down nature’s forms into geometric shapes and lines, McCahon utilises the compositional formula of the 17th-century landscape painter Claude Lorrain which gave the French artist’s works a feeling of a pleasant yet natural balance. SARAH THEOBALD