BC088
Three Trees Brentwood Avenue
Landscape showing three Norfolk Island Pine trees. Framing device of diagonal element left and right lower corners, formed by unpainted or very thinly painted canvas. Horizontal bands of blurred colour lower part of canvas.
Verso pencil on strip of green repair canvas (not in artist's hand) Studio in Dominion Road. Brentwood Avenue (there for two years at various times) 1977 ... heart attack. (now covered by frame)
Verso A.T.L. Scales, Helen Flora Three trees, Brentwood Avenue. 1977 oil, 31 x 41cms Rack 396 92170½ (now covered by frame)
Verso Upper Centre label 337
Verso UL label artwork details
Verso Right Centre (not in artist's hand) pencil 291
Verso Lower Centre (not in artist's hand) pencil 396
Donated to the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand by H. F. V. Scales, 1979
Vertical cut left of centre. Repaired with green repair canvas by James Ross, c1979. This repair is now concealed by framing.
Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand
Wellington, New Zealand
Title and date supplied by artist at time of donation, 1979.
Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand documentation notes, “Semi-representational showing three Norfolk Pines, done from the artist's studio in Dominion Road, Auckland / At the time this was painted the artist's eyesight was failing / Rejected by the artist and slashed across the centre, but later mended"
Flora Scales cut this canvas vertically left of centre but later regretted this action. Repaired with an attachment of green canvas backing by James Ross, prior to the donation in 1979. This repair is now concealed by framing.
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 at 38 Brentwood Avenue, Mt Eden, Auckland, 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.”
Scales lived in this Mt Eden address 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.
This image is distinguishable from View from Dominion Road [BC087] by the predominantly red and blue brush strokes.
