[3] Her fellow students included Toss Woollaston, Rodney Kennedy, Doris Lusk, Len Castle, and Colin McCahon.
In 1938, two paintings were exhibited in a group show at the Wellington Sketch Club and described as 'outstanding' by the local newspaper: "Two oils by Anne Hamblett called for considerable attention.
As art critic Wystan Curnow has noted, "It became customary for a group of young Dunedin painters and intellectuals to gather in summer at Māpua or elsewhere in the Nelson region to earn money picking fruit or tobacco, and to paint, read, listen to music and talk.
[As well as] Woollaston, McCahon and Kennedy, the group included Patrick Hayman, Anne Hamblett, Doris Lusk, and Ron and Betty O'Reilly.
Hamblett and McCahon grew closer, sharing friends and working on joint projects such as stage sets for a local production of the John Galsworthy comedy Windows with Rodney Kennedy.
[14] Art historian Linda Tyler suggests that during the early war years, their closeness began to "manifest itself in their paintings in the form of cross-fertilisation of ideas and style."
Tyler also suggested that Hamblett's "intellectual contribution to McCahon lasted all his life" and that in interviews with the family it became clear that he constantly asked for her advice and "respected her eye and her ability to make useful aesthetic criticism of his work.
[10] In 1945 Anne McCahon was invited by writer Peggy Dunningham to illustrate her book for children Three Brown Bears and the Manpower Man.
While her marriage was not an easy one from the early days of poverty and itinerant living to meeting the demands of four children and a husband with a demanding full-time job and a long commute, most commentators agree with art historian Tony Green that "McCahon was… a lucky man in that he simply could not have achieved what he did without the career-long support of Anne (née Hamblett), his wife and also an artist.
Artist Shannon Te Ao recalls of his time filming there, "on a rainy day in July… the elements turn against the architecture.
"[30] However, the house also provided a place for friends to meet in the weekends and became something of a magnet for many of the leading literary and art figures of the time.
"[20] The McCahon family moved to the central Auckland suburb of Grey Lynn in 1960, buying a house at 109 Crummer Road.
Anne wrote letters to his dealers on his behalf,[33] and in 1984 accompanied him to the exhibition McCahon I Will Need Words at the Fifth Sydney Biennale.
A decade later, Linda Tyler,[34] Associate Professor of Museums and Cultural Heritage at the University of Auckland, began to drawn attention to her work as Anne Hamblett for the first time since the final exhibition in the 1940s.
As the exhibition’s researcher Jessica Douglas put it, "Despite the meaningful contribution made by Hamblett to Dunedin's regionalism, she has been unrecognised and ignored in New Zealand’s art history.