“We hope this exhibition will tell people of a lifetime of painting, from her sometimes didactic early work to the poetry of her plum trees [BC071-BC075, BC077] and the portraits [BC065, BC066, BC120].
The beauty of her vision comes from her thinking about painting and from the grace and care she gives to her work. Without this, how could the plum trees have grown and the portraits become so real?”
BC075
Pear Tree
Landscape. Left side of canvas forked motif with a third vertical reaching to the upper margin. Right side of canvas brown vertical element with five offset bars or horizontal shapes. Upper framing edge amorphous pale shape between the two darker vertical elements.
Other title(s)
Orchard with Plum Tree
Date
1970
Object type
painting
Medium and materials
oil on canvas
Dimensions
261x335mm
Place Made
Bry-sur-Marne, France
Inscriptions
LR brown brush point H Scales
Verso on canvas (in artist's hand) F or H Scales 1970 (initial illegible) (now covered by frame)
Verso Upper Centre label 352
Verso UL label artwork details
Verso Right Centre (not in artist's hand) pencil [illegible]
Details
Provenance
Donated to the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand by H. F. V. Scales, 1979
Copyright Licence
Courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Reference no. G-352
Current Collection
Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand
Current Location
Wellington, New Zealand
General notes
Title and date supplied by artist at time of donation, 1979.
This is probably the painting titled Orchard with Plum Tree (no. 39) from the exhibition Helen F V Scales at Auckland City Art Gallery, New Zealand, 1975-1976. The title change from Plum Tree to Pear Tree may have been a revised memory by the artist at the time of donation to Alexander Turnbull Library.
Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand documentation suggests “...probably in or near Rotorua”. Scales returned to New Zealand 1972.
The central V-shape of the forked tree trunk is reminiscent of the ship's rigging seen in Scales's work of the 1920s [Shipping, Wellington Harbour] [BC128]]. It also brings to mind the agaves of the 1930s [Untitled [Mediterranean Scene] 1 [BC016]] and the derricks of the 1950s [Untitled [Mousehole Cornwall 2] [BC029]], in which this shape becomes a tool for her construction of dynamic pictorial space.
The V-shapes of the agaves, trees and derricks, significant elements in her work during and after the 1930s, begin to form the vocabulary of her Modernist work following Hans Hofmann's instruction to do away with single-point perspective.
As well as the equilibrium established by the balanced vanes of the V-shape, there is also an immanent sense of movement. Hofmann said, "We have to experience the object as vital in her existence in space" (Dickey, Tina, Color Creates Light: Studies with Hans Hofmann, Trillistar Books, Canada, 2011, pg 27). Hofmann explained that volumes revolve on their axes to create a sense of movement and counter-movement, which animates and gives depth to the flat surface of the picture plane.
Scales's use and manipulation of the V-shape is one of several examples in her work which demonstrate the way she assimilated, and made her own, the teachings of Hans Hofmann. This example in particular shows her personal interpretation, without imitation, of his theories about the creation of plastic space, which were crucial to the development of her modernism.
Exhibitions
Related work
References
Foreword by Colin McCahon, Helen F V Scales exhibition catalogue, Auckland City Art Gallery, New Zealand, November 1975
‘Flora Scales Work on Show’ by T. J. McNamara, New Zealand Herald, 9 January 1976
'Art award a lottery for losers' by James Ross, The Week, 16 July 1976, pg 17
‘A Personal Reminiscence’ by Gretchen Albrecht, Art New Zealand, issue 37, 1985, pg 52
“Also displayed along with the self-portraits was a group of Orchard with Plum Tree [BC071-BC075, BC077] paintings, exquisitely beautiful in their blushes and strokes of paint; edges dissolving and reassembling in planes of colour, and revealing an intelligent understanding of post-cubist ideas derived from Cézanne’s principles of organising pictorial space. My response to the poetic vision of these paintings was immediate and intense, and I left the Gallery driven by an urgent desire to meet and speak to the woman who had painted them.”
'A Friend of Flora' by Gretchen Albrecht, Flora Scales, The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatū, Nelson, New Zealand, 2018, pp 39-43
“My response to these self portraits [Portrait 2 [BC065], Portrait 3 [BC066], Portrait 1 [BC120]] and a poetic group of landscapes all titled ‘ Orchard and Plum Tree’ [BC071-BC075, BC077], with their strokes of paint dissolving and reassembling edges and planes of colour, was immediate and intense. I left the gallery driven by an urgent desire to meet and speak to the woman who had painted them...For me she was living proof that painting could stand at the core of a woman’s life and sustain her through anything. She was humble and unambitious for herself but always hungry for painting knowledge, which ended in her 98th year. I am richer for having known and loved her.”