"In the gorgeous Untitled [Two Green Trees] [BC014] (c.1931-2), hard colours thaw in the bright sunlight. Subtle tonal shifts drift across the surface; shadows are formed of rich purples and greens, alleviated by flashes of ochre and yellow. Details – of the trees, the distant water, a glimpse of a terracotta roof – dissolve at the threshold of legibility. The painting is at once abstracted and deeply evocative of the heat haze of a summer’s day."
BC014
Untitled
[Two Green Trees]
Landscape painted from a viewpoint above and to the right of the scene, overlooking red rooftop of a white building. Water and hills in the distance. Centre two tall trees. Lower edge right pale horizontal element possibly a narrow path.
Other title(s)
Green Tree and Bay
Date
1931
1932
Object type
painting
Medium and materials
oil on canvas
Dimensions
311x392mm
Place Made
France
Details
Condition Report
Canvas surface uneven and varnished
Current Collection
Private Collection
Current Location
New Zealand
General notes
Alternative title, Green Tree and Bay, taken from the exhibition Flora Scales at The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatū, Nelson, New Zealand, 2018.
Possibly painted in 1931 in the South of France. Flora Scales had some instruction from E.D. Kinzinger in St Tropez, France, Summer 1931. Scales could possibly have brought this painting with her from France to Christchurch, New Zealand, where she was located by June 1932.
Scales described the delight of travelling south to St Tropez by train in the 1930s to Linda Gill, 27.08.1976, “...most wonderful landscape…the farmhouses are pink and they rise straight out of the grapevines which are sometimes quite yellow.”
A few years earlier the English painter Vanessa Bell had also described the dramatic contrast between Northern Europe and the South of France, and the joy of living and working in the "Midi", in a letter to her sister, Virginia Woolf, 05.02.1927, “Painting is a different thing here from what it can be in the winter in England. It’s never dark even when the sky is grey. The light...is perfect and even now one could often work out of doors, if one wanted to. It makes such a difference to be sure one won’t be suddenly held up in the middle of something by fog or darkness. Also the beauty is a constant delight. The people are very friendly and helpful and living is very cheap...it seems more and more ridiculous for painters to spend half their lives in the dark.” – excerpt from Spalding, Frances, Vanessa Bell: Portrait of the Bloomsbury Artist, Tauris Parke Paperbacks, London, England, 2016, pg 216
An early appearance of the foreground element, possibly a path, which became a distinctive motif in her work of the 1930s, for instance, Mediterranean Village [BC019], Untitled [Basilica and Lighthouse, St Tropez] [BC020] and Basilica and Lighthouse, St Tropez, Southern France [BC021].
Exhibitions
Related work
References