“It is very fitting that the City Art Gallery should mount an exhibition by New Zealand women painters as a contribution to International Women’s Year because women have played a very large part in our artistic history...As Anne Kirker and Eric Young point out in their introduction...women artists have not been dilettante amateurs dabbling in art but have been right in the main stream of our painting....If there is a unifying factor in all the work it is the assurance with which colour is handled. What should please the feminists is that all this work stands firmly on its own high merit and defies any condescension on the grounds of some mythical specially “feminine” appeal.”
BC053
Flowers: St Ives
Still life. Pink, red and white flowers against a pale blue background. Blue vase against white with three fruit. Element lower left corner may be a vessel on a blue background. A narrow horizontal band of brown moves from right framing edge to vase, sloping slightly down to left.
Other title(s)
Flowers and Fruit
Date
c. 1970
Object type
painting
Medium and materials
oil on prepared board
Dimensions
340x260mm
Place Made
St Ives, Cornwall, England
Inscriptions
LR ochre brush point Scales
Verso (not in artist's hand) Mrs Muriel McLeod, (owner's address), 26 April 1976
Details
Provenance
Purchased by Mrs Muriel McLeod from Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand, March 1976, when it toured there from the Auckland City Art Gallery, New Zealand, exhibition, Helen F V Scales, 1975-1976
Current Collection
Private Collection
Current Location
Unknown
General notes
First title supplied by the artist for Auckland City Art Gallery, New Zealand, exhibition, New Zealand's Women Painters, 1975. Listed as artwork no. 43 in this exhibition with medium as oil on fabric.
Second title and date supplied by the artist for Auckland City Art Gallery exhibition, Helen F V Scales, 1975-1976. Listed as artwork no. 33 in this exhibition.
Flora Scales in a letter to Anne Kirker, 1975, held in Auckland Art Gallery Research Library, ref. Scales, H F V correspondence 2A: “It is interesting to hear about the exhibition of New Zealand Women Painters and it is good of you to include some of mine and you do not owe the least apology for taking them. Mr Colin McCahon would seem enthusiastic in anything he undertook and am sure he will make the most of my work [referring to Scales's imminent Auckland City Art Gallery exhibition, 1975-1976, of which McCahon was the initiator]. I left Dunedin about five weeks ago where it is cool to come here permanently – the climate here [in Auckland] is lovely.”
Correspondence Mrs Muriel McLeod, the original owner, to B. de Lange, 1983, “Very pleasing contrast of flowers and fruits offset by interesting shapes.”
Image taken from photographic transparency slides. This is the only image recorded of this work, its location is unknown.
Exhibitions
Used as illustration
Helen F V Scales, Auckland City Art Gallery, New Zealand, 1975, pg 12 (black and white)
References
‘Paintings by Women – on Merit’ by T. J. McNamara, New Zealand Herald, 20 June 1975, section 1, pg 11
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