Untitled

Original owner Mrs. Patience Tennent, the artist’s niece. Titled according to information given to Tennent by the artist.

Alternative title, 5 Boats and Derrick, taken from the exhibition Flora Scales at The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatū, Nelson, 2018.

In conversation with B. de Lange, 1983, Scales spoke of living in “a horrible yellow house in Mousehole.” The yellow house seen in this painting, Untitled [Mousehole, Cornwall 2] [BC029] and Untitled [Mousehole, Cornwall 3] [BC030] could possibly be the one to which she was referring.

As in Untitled [Mousehole Cornwall 2] [BC029] and Untitled [Mousehole Cornwall 3] [BC030], the derrick is the focal point of this composition. The V-shape formed by its vanes links this painting to the early shapes of ship’s rigging [Shipping, Wellington Harbour] [BC128]], the agaves of the 1930s [Untitled [Mediterranean Scene] 1 [BC016]] and the forked tree trunks of the late 1960s and early 1970s [Bry-sur-Marne, Orchard] [BC069]], in which this shape becomes a tool for her construction of dynamic pictorial space.

The V-shapes of the agaves, trees and derricks, significant elements in her work during and after the 1930s, begin to form the vocabulary of her Modernist work following Hans Hofmann's instruction to do away with single-point perspective.

As well as the equilibrium established by the balanced vanes of the V-shape, there is also an immanent sense of movement. Hofmann said, "We have to experience the object as vital in her existence in space" (Dickey, Tina, Color Creates Light: Studies with Hans Hofmann, Trillistar Books, Canada, 2011, pg 27). Hofmann explained that volumes revolve on their axes to create a sense of movement and counter-movement, which animates and gives depth to the flat surface of the picture plane.

Scales's use and manipulation of the V-shape is one of several examples in her work which demonstrate the way she assimilated, and made her own, the teachings of Hans Hofmann. This example in particular shows her personal interpretation, without imitation, of his theories about the creation of plastic space, which were crucial to the development of her modernism.

Accompanying text for this work in the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand online collection, written by Julia Waite, Curator New Zealand Art, 2025, reads, "Helen Flora Scales was an independent, searching artist who lived between Europe and New Zealand, unshackled from any one national art history. In the early 1950s, she spent time in Cornwall, where she recalled hearing Barbara Hepworth’s hammering as she passed the sculptor’s studio in St Ives. Ten miles south, in the coastal village of Mousehole, Scales captured scenes of the bay with uncompromising concision and sensitivity to colour and form. Speaking to researcher Barbara de Lange in 1983, Scales recalled living in ‘a horrible yellow house in Mousehole’. The yellow house seen in Untitled [Mousehole, Cornwall] could be the one she was referring to. The derrick is the focal point of the composition and a tool for the construction of dynamic pictorial space. Scales's use of the V-shape is one of several examples in her work which demonstrate the way she assimilated the teachings of Hans Hofmann. In 1976, Scales held her first major solo exhibition, Helen F V Scales, at Auckland City Art Gallery with one reviewer describing the painting as ‘charming in an unimportant sort of way’. Such assessments were likely of little consequence to a painter as independent and singularly focused as Scales – for soon she was off again, returning to her beloved France later that year." - https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/artwork/39563/untitled-mousehole-cornwall