Rita Angus is well known for her many self-portraits and portraits of friends such as the much-celebrated portrait of Betty Curnow, 1942. Portraits and studies of family members, including her brothers and sisters are also prominent. Jean, Rita's younger sister to whom she was very close, features in a number of these studies. The present portrait called simply Anton depicts Jean's son who was born in 1941. Rita, who often stayed with Jean and her husband Fred Jones, doted on Anton. He first appears in her watercolour Mother and Child of 1942, now in the Auckland Art Gallery, as a baby in his mother's lap. The present portrait shows Anton aged about five or six and, although undated, must have been painted circa 1946 - 47. At this time, Rita was living alone in a cottage on the Aranoni Track near Sumner. She often stayed with Jean and her family for weekends, perhaps for company, and for longer periods when Fred was away on business providing relaxed hours for sketches and studies. She used the signature Rita Angus to which she reverted in 1946 when, after her divorce, she stopped using her married name Rita Cook. The work is listed as Anton in her inventory of oil paintings. Angus was at her most active as a portraitist in the 1930s and 1940s. She did not undertake formal portrait commissions; instead she made works for personal reasons of sitters she knew, respected or loved. Her painted portraits of children are comparatively rare though they include familiar works like the unforgettable double portrait Fay and Jane Birkenshaw and the Head of a Maori Boy both dating to the late 1930s. Here she depicts Anton seated on what looks like a bench, shown in a three-quarter view, though the face is depicted from a combination of viewpoints: the contour of the nose, lips and jaw make a profile, while the cheek and brow seem to have been viewed from a different angle. This composite approach was used in some of her later landscapes. Anton gazes away from the viewer and appears somewhat detached. His short-back-and-sides haircut and buttoned-up shirt and shorts give the appearance of a schoolboy whose true energy and spirit have been constrained by social norms and expectations. The tense way he holds his hands to his thighs gives the impression he will jump up and run away as soon as he is allowed freedom from posing. As so often with Angus, the figure is stylised, as shown by the firm contours and simplified modelling used to emphasise form. The folds in the jumper are abstracted and form repeating patterns of light and dark. The overall effect of the portrait is one which captures the essential qualities of boyhood in 1940s New Zealand.