View from Dominion Road

Title and date supplied by artist at time of donation, 1979.

Alternative title, Brentwood Avenue, 3 trees, View Dominion Road, taken from Flora Scales, The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatū, Nelson, New Zealand, 2018, pg 35.

Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand documentation notes, "A blurred view of three Norfolk Pines visible from the artist's window / At the time these trees were painted, the artist's eyesight was failing."

Scales lived at 38 Brentwood Avenue, Mt Eden, Auckland, 1975-1978 after she arrived in Auckland from Dunedin. During this time her major solo exhibition, Helen F.V. Scales, was held at the Auckland City Art Gallery. Scales returned to France in late 1976 for a few months before returning again to the Brentwood Avenue address in May 1977. She resided there until 26 October 1978 when she moved to the Rotorua Masonic Village until just before her death in January 1985.

Flora Scales’s life as an artist in New Zealand in the late 1970s was frequently disrupted by bouts of ill health. Noting her frustration, a visitor to her flat in Mt Eden looked out of the window and said, “paint that”, resulting in the series of three known paintings based on the trees beyond the Dominion Road flyover, Mt Eden, Auckland [View from Dominion Road [BC087], Three Trees Brentwood Avenue [BC088], Trees in Auckland [BC089]]. Scales described the view in conversation with M. de Lange, 1983 as “…a stone wall with a road on top.”