BC121
Untitled
[Landscape with curved road and trees]
Landscape painted predominantly in mauve and green. A pale road, patterned with shadows of tall trees and bushes on left-hand side, begins lower left corner and curves to left at mid right margin.
LL soft black pencil Flora Scales
LR black brush point Flora Scales (obscured by frame)
Verso Upper Centre attached photograph of original prepared board verso stamp detailing board sizes
Verso Centre attached photograph of LR corner of painting showing dark grey brush point Flora Scales (now obscured by framing mat)
Verso Lower Centre label Framed with Museum glass
Private Collection
Wellington, New Zealand
Visible signature LL is similar to that of Eastern Extension Cable Company's Ship "Patrol" in Wellington Harbour [BC122]. A photograph attached to the back of the painting provides proof of a second signature LR now obscured by the frame. The current owner, as at 2019, brought this work from a second-hand shop in Johnsonville, Wellington, New Zealand, in the early 2000s. It was reframed in 2012.
Accompanying the painting was a newspaper cutting, New Zealand Herald, 9 January 1976, ‘Flora Scales Work on Show’ by T. J. McNamara and is a review of Helen F V Scales at Auckland City Art Gallery, 1975-1976.
The paint in this work is loosely applied and the rendering impressionistic. Similar trees painted as a spiral, like the one here mid right, can be found in later landscapes such as Untitled [Mediterranean Scene] [BC017].
In three of Scales’s early 1920s landscape paintings, Untitled [Landscape with curved road and trees] [BC121], Untitled [Nelson Farm Landscape] [BC127] and The Valley Road [BC139], a wide curved road leads deep into the middle distance on a strong left to right diagonal implying by its curve an eventual return towards the centre of the composition to balance the two point perspective. Shadows and the hazy blue distance of the atmospheric perspective contribute to the naturalism of the scene in keeping with the conventions of landscape painting in New Zealand at that time.
Photos by Shaun Waugh