"Scales attended Canterbury College School of Art and studied painting in London before returning to New Zealand in 1912. After World War I her family settled in Nelson where she worked as an orchardist, and one of the works in the Richardson Collection Lot 108 Nelson Farm Landscape [BC127] dates from these years. Like other early works, including Lot 107 Shipping Wellington Harbour [BC128] and Lot 109 Moored Yachts [BC010] it is painted in a harmonious range of low-keyed colours and demonstrates an impressionist interest in atmospheric effects."
BC127
Untitled
[Nelson Farm Landscape]
Rural scene. Road curves from left lower edge into middle distance. Midground wooden bridge railings. Plants at either side of bridge, flax flowers or seed pods on plants at right. Buildings, hazy hills and trees in background.
Date
c. 1920 – 1929
Object type
painting
Medium and materials
oil on canvas on board
Dimensions
image:220x262mm
frame:330x370mm
Place Made
New Zealand
Inscriptions
LR dark brown brush point Flora Scales
Verso framer’s label City Art, 96 Disraeli St, Christchurch, Job No 5036
Verso Left label Flora Scales, Nelson Farm Landscape, oil on canvasboard, 220 x 260, purchased 25/11/08, Cost $3,500.00
Details
Provenance
Sold by auction at Webb's, Auckland, New Zealand, Important New Zealand Works of Art, 27.03.1996, Lot 1
Sold by auction at Dunbar Sloane, Wellington, New Zealand, The Sir Ivor Richardson Art Collection, 22.03.2006, Lot 108
Purchased by Scales Corporation Limited, Christchurch, New Zealand, from Ferner Galleries, New Zealand, 25.11.2008
Condition Report
Pinholes evident lower left and right corners
Current Collection
Scales Corporation Limited
Current Location
Christchurch, New Zealand
General notes
Title, [Nelson Farm Landscape], may have originated in an auctioneer’s catalogue and is listed as such in Winter Catalogue 2006: An A-Z of New Zealand Art, Ferner Galleries, New Zealand.
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, in keeping with the conventions of landscape painting in New Zealand at that time.
Exhibitions
Used as illustration
Winter Catalogue 2006: An A-Z of New Zealand Art, Ferner Galleries, New Zealand, 2006, pg 51 (colour)
References
Catalogue essay by Jill Trevelyan, The Sir Ivor Richardson Art Collection, Dunbar Sloane, Wellington, New Zealand, 22.03.2006
Winter Catalogue 2006: An A-Z of New Zealand Art, Ferner Galleries, New Zealand, 2006, pg 51
“By 1912 Flora Scales had attended Canterbury College School of Art and studied painting in London. She was part of a generation of New Zealand women that also includes Frances Hodgkins, Mina Arndt and Dorothy Kate Richmond, who travelled abroad in the early twentieth century to further their study of art.
After World War I, Scales' family settled in Nelson and it is during this period that this painting was completed. Painted in a harmonious range of low key colours the dry heat of the summer scene is perfectly conveyed. The background ranges appear as little more than mauve, abstract forms while the diminishing perspective of the wooden bridge invites the viewer into the scene, guiding the eye to the homestead beyond.
After the death of her father in 1928 Scales returned to Europe to further her studies. Like Edith Collier, she studied in Germany, attending Hans Hofmann's School in Munich, and in 1934, while living in Nelson, she passed on the elements of his teachings to Toss Woollaston, a renowned landscapist of the next generation. Returning overseas again in 1936, Scales did not settle in New Zealand again until 1972.”
Acknowledgments
Photos by John Collie