Aalto McCahon French Bay House Palette

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The McCahon French Bay House palette was developed at Aalto from the original paint scrapings gathered from the interior and exterior of the French Bay house.

The house, thanks to the McCahon House Trust has now been restored to the original colour scheme developed by Colin McCahon.

From 1953 Colin McCahon, his wife Anne and their four children William, Victoria, Catherine and Matthew, lived in a small house at 67 Otitori Bay Road, Titirangi, until they moved to Partridge Street, Arch Hill in 1960.

McCahon made many alterations to the house in the years that the family lived there; some further changes were made after the McCahons left; but to a surprising extent the house has been preserved much as it was in 1960.

The McCahon House Trust (with the support of the Waitakere City Council) has elected to purchase and preserve the house, partly in honour of Colin McCahon’s achievements as an artist during the years that he lived there, and partly because it is a highly characteristic example of the kind of dwelling—the weekend bach—that was very common half a century ago in places like Titirangi but which seldom survives in original condition today. The French Bay House represents a unique piece of cultural and social history.

Titirangi—a Maori word often translated as 'the fringe of heaven’—is situated in the foothills of the Waitakere Ranges and skirts the northern shore of the Manukau Harbour.
In the centuries prior to European settlement the area was densely covered with rain forest, especially kauri, but also including rewarewa, rimu, puriri, taraire, pohutukawa, kahikatea, kowhai, mahoe, nikau, ponga and other trees of the New Zealand bush. However, within half a century from the 1830s the bush was rapidly removed, through the establishment of farms on the cleared land.

The Ranges were not ideally suited for farming purposes, however, and from the time of the First World War much of the cleared land began reverting to bush. In 1919 the 300 acre Atkinson Estate (the name is preserved in Mount Atkinson which McCahon painted in 1958), was subdivided, and marketed to Aucklanders as suitable for summer or weekend cottages close to the Manukau Harbour and the bush of the Waitakere Ranges. In the 1920s the Italian-styled Titirangi Hotel was opened nearby in the building now known as Lopdell House, though the fact that liquor could not be sold in the area restricted its potential as a social venue.

There were few roads in the area and the allotments were only slowly taken up.
The site of the McCahon house in Otitori Bay Road was part of a 1923 subdivision and was eventually purchased in 1939 by Herbert Godfrey Harbour who built the bach at 67 Otitori Bay Road shortly afterwards. It had one further owner (a Mr and Mrs Mason) before it was purchased by the McCahons in 1953.

From the 1950s the area became increasingly popular with artists, writers, potters and others searching for alternatives to conventional suburbia. Apart from the McCahons, among those who lived in Titirangi were potters Jeff Scholes and Len Castle, writer Maurice Shadbolt, and poet John Caselberg.

Nowadays Titirangi is a populous suburb and a highly desirable residential area. The village has expanded considerably from what it was in the 1950s Lopdell House has become a thriving art gallery operated by the Waitakere City Council.

Undoubtedly one of Colin McCahon’s motives for purchasing the house in Otitori Bay Rd was cost. Such dwellings were relatively cheap and the McCahons were not well-off.
Ever since Colin and Anne’s marriage in 1942 housing had presented difficulties for the growing family. In 1948, for instance, when they had to leave their house in Tahunanui, Nelson, and unable to find a house they could afford anywhere in the country, the family was forced to separate for about a year. Colin moved to Christchurch, where he lived in a washhouse that served as both bedroom and studio, located behind the house of his Dunedin friend the painter Doris Lusk (Holland), but Anne and the children had to go to Dunedin to live with her parents. Eventually, the family was reunited in a small house in Barbour Street, Linwood, a working-class suburb of Christchurch.

Colin jumped at the chance of a job at the Auckland City Art Gallery, a more salubrious occupation for an artist than the seasonal work in orchards, gardening, and builder’s labouring which he had done previously (he also made costume jewellery to sell). Even so, the house they acquired in Titirangi was small and fairly primitive, and the early months in Auckland, which corresponded with winter—cold and damp in the kauri forest on the southward-facing slopes—were fairly grim.

According to Colin:

We came to Auckland in 1953 and lived in Titirangi in a tiny house at French Bay.
(Colin McCahon a survey, 1972, p. 22)

Nevertheless—particularly once the summer arrived and Colin had made some necessary alterations—he spoke positively to his friends about their new home. His enthusiasm for the Auckland and Titirangi environment and his intense involvement in making alterations to the new house and establishing a garden are evident in extracts from letters to his Christchurch friend, the writer John Caselberg:
14 July 1954:

Am in a rush, trying to catch up with letters & such things—I seem to be spending nearly all my time doing carpentry around the house. And I want to start on some painting—sometime but must get things working at home first of all. Have ordered some timber on the strength of your money [for a painting Caselberg had bought]. We always seem to strike places without shelves—or possibly we need lots more than most people.

Alterations continued virtually up to the time the McCahons left for the city in 1960.
Otitori Bay Road runs steeply down through the bush to French Bay. The McCahons' house was close to the bottom of the road and situated in a steep valley which falls away sharply from the road.

The house was little more than a basic bach set on a steeply sloping site densely covered with kauri and other trees. There was a small garage at road level which was later converted into a studio. From the road there was a steep path down to the house. A tiny kitchen doubled as the entrance lobby. A small lean-to area served as laundry, bathroom and dining area. On the other side of the kitchen was a living room with an alcoved porch off it beside a fireplace. Colin painted a large mural for the living room wall.

The house had electricity and town supply water, but the outside toilet facilities were very primitive. Initially the children slept in the lean-to area of the living room; Colin & Anne slept in the tiny porch.

In 1955 a new bathroom was constructed in an area dug out beneath the lean-to area of the living room where a bunkroom for the children was also constructed. Entry was through a kind of trap-door in the floor with a steep stair which Colin constructed. Colin was assisted in the building by Peter Webb (then a colleague at the Gallery) and other friends. The basement area was later expanded to form sleeping bays for the children—open-sided rooms with bunk beds and shelves. The roof of this area was used as a deck—wooden boards covered with black malthoid cloth (it was concreted after the McCahon era)—where much of the social activity of the house went on in warmer and dry weather.

In 1958 McCahon built a bedroom for the boys underneath the garage/studio where he did most of his painting. He wrote in 1972:

 
The smallness and inconvenient simplicity of the dwelling often shocks visitors nowadays,

but the McCahon children have mostly warm memories of their primitive living conditions. Below the house was a clearing in the trees, forming a sort of yard that contained fruit trees, flowers and shrubs, a vegetable garden, a chook house and a washing line. The paths and retaining walls on the property were all built by Colin.

One childhood friend of the family remembers the house as an inspirational place—vital, full of conversation and music and the smells of studio and domestic life—with a tremendous sense of ‘home’. The artist Pat Hanly who visited in October 1957, en route to Europe, with the photographer Barry Millar, found the McCahon place refreshingly ‘modern’ in style (after Colin’s idiosyncratic alterations), and an antidote to the stuffiness of most New Zealand houses of the period, especially in Christchurch where he had been studying at art school.

The growing size of the children was probably a main reason the McCahons decided to move to the city in 1960. It is possible, too, that they were unsettled by their visit to America for several months in 1958 While the McCahons were well-liked by most of their neighbours, there are also stories that the family were ostracized by some in the neighbourhood who were suspicious of artists and the relatively bohemian life style of the McCahons; this may have also contributed to their decision to leave.

After the McCahons left in 1960, the house was taken over by their friend Jacqueline Amoamo and her husband. Various alterations were made, including the creation of another deck near the garage, building a roof over part of the deck, and (eventually) the installation of a flush-toilet. The entrance path, too, was altered and concreted.

The McCahon House Trust is actively engaged in preserving the McCahons' French Bay House, and as far as practicable will restore the appearance and character it had at the end of the 1950s.
This will enable the building to stand as a testament to Colin McCahon during these vital years of his career and provide a living record of the circumstances under which his family lived during an era which is rapidly becoming remote from contemporary experience and understanding.

Caution: Attempts to duplicate Aalto Colours by eye or by electronic means may give the illusion of a match but on the walls the resulting colours will lack the depth, subtlety and complexity of the original. Combinations of such colours will not 'work' in a colour scheme.

Copyright 2001 Aalto Colours Limited

The colours and colour names contained in Aalto Toi Maori range are the subject of copyright and may not be copied or adapted without prior consent of the copyright holder. The formulations for the induvidual colours are also the property of the copyright holder and are not available from other manufacturers or retailers.