Artist who loved Tonga, Sune Egan (93), passes away [1]
Friday, November 24, 2023 - 18:52. Updated on Friday, November 24, 2023 - 18:57.
The artist who loved Tonga, Sune Egan, passed away peacefully in Forster, NSW, Australia, on Sunday 19 November, five months after her 93rd birthday.
Sune was best known for her paintings of Tongan people and scenery on tapa cloth and her whimsical Santa Christmas cards, created during the three decades she lived in Tonga from 1975.
As a young woman, the Australian-born June, after attending the National Art School in Sydney, began her working career as a press artist for the Australian Women's Weekly. She created her own comic strip "Holly" which was syndicated to nationally distributed newspapers.
During her first visit to Tonga in 1974, she fell in love with the islands. Inspired by the physical beauty of the people and the lush tropical scenery, she made Tonga her home and began pencil sketching and painting, what she saw, on white tapa cloth (feta'aki). She became known by her Tongan name "Sune".
Sune's works quickly became popular and she exhibited her paintings in Tonga, Fiji, Tahiti and Hawaii.
Her early work in Tonga captures a nostalgic landscape and people with a simpler way of life than the Tonga of today: the traditional Tongan fales under coconut palms and women engaged in their daily life, weaving and washing; a handsome young man with an impressive physique.
Her commissioned portraits hang in the homes of Tongan society.
The late Queen Halaevalu Mata'aho had given her permission to sign her work: "by Royal appointment".
Her later work, a collection of pencil sketches of Nuku'alofa's historic buildings, captured a residual charm of the developing capital at the turn of the Millennium.
Sune's, artist son Shane Egan and his family also migrated to Tonga and established the Blue Banana Studio and Beach Resort.
Sune is survived by her two sons Shane and Dale Egan; her grandson, Chas Egan and granddaughter, Hayley Egan; and great granddaughter, Elvis.
Her putu will be held on Friday, 1 December, 2023 at her home in Forster. She will be laid to rest in the little country town of Beechwood, her hometown as a child.