Daughter of William McKenzie Angus, the owner of a successful Hawke's Bay construction business, Rita Angus enrolled at Canterbury College School of Art in 1927. She later recalled - My father taught me as a child that whatever I wanted to make of my life I must do so, and not waste time talking about it. His focus on building also fostered an appreciation for architecture which became a a dominant theme in her painting. Concerned about his eldest daughter's precarious existence as an artist, her father bought her a Paul Pascoe-designed modernist house at 18 Aranoni Track in Clifton, Christchurch, with spectacular views over Sumner Beach. Nine years later, he gifted her a parcel of shares in his company, from which she derived an income for the rest of her life. She sold the Clifton house in 1955 and with the proceeds bought a 1877 cottage discreetly positioned at 194a Sydney Street, Thorndon. The views to the north-east, over the city to the harbour (as seen in this work) were restful, and it was just a short walk to the Tinakori Road home of her friend, composer Douglas Lilburn.

Wellington suited Rita Angus very well, and she created enough work in two years for her first solo exhibition which was held at the Architectural Centre Gallery in 1957. The next year, when she turned 50, she used an Association of New Zealand Art Societies Fellowship to fund travel to England and Europe, attending life drawing classes at the Chelsea School of Art. She painted several versions of the view of London rooftops from the window of her room in Oakley Street, Chelsea. On her return to Wellington, Colin McCahon requested her recent paintings for the exhibition Five New Zealand Watercolourists at the Auckland City Art Gallery where Kees and Tine Hos may have first become acquainted with her skill as a watercolourist.

This painting of the view from her studio window shows her interest in geometricizing the structure of buildings with the front of the houses on the opposite side of Sydney Street West in the foreground, the back of Parliament Buildings in the midground and, across the harbour, Point Howard and Lowry Bay in the distance. It is a very similar composition to Early Morning, Thorndon (1962) a watercolour purchased for the Canterbury Public Library by Ron O'Reilly and now in the collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery, except for the salmon pink block of Cecil Wood's 18 metre high Wellington Cathedral of St Paul in Molesworth Street which can be seen at upper left. Three years later, an extension to the motorway was underway and depictions of the soon-to-be demolished architectural features of Thorndon dominated Angus's sketchbooks until her death in 1970.