New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition 1917

‘N.Z. Academy of Fine Arts, Notes on the pictures’ by “The Lay Figure”, Dominion, 1 October 1917, pg 6, “Visitors to the Academy's exhibitions of recent years have always taken a lively interest in the work of Miss Flora Scales, who every year testifies to the fascination which horses have for her. This year Miss Scales is as "strong” as ever, indeed, in more than one of her always interesting studies she pushes “strength” to the verge of brutality. Miss Scales is as clever as ever in her studies of horses in strong sunlight, but she is gradually developing a crudity of colour which goes perilously near pictorial vulgarity. On an exhibition wall, the excessive strength is perhaps attractive, but to place one of these pictures in a quiet room–well, that is quite a different matter. The artist is at her best, I think, in "The Day’s Work (No. 232) [BC140]. In "Summer Calm" (No. 225) the bank of the stream appears to have come down on the back of the horse and cart. There is something radically wrong with the drawing.” 

‘N.Z. Academy of Fine Arts, Notes on the pictures’ by “The Lay Figure”, Dominion, 6 October 1917, pg 3, “Miss Flora Scales does not often essay water-colour. Her little drawing “A Quiet Glade" (No. 112), has some delightful colour.”

Of note in this article is the review of work by Flora Scales’ contemporary, Frances Hodgkins, “There are two pictures by the well-known professional artist, Miss F M Hodgkins, which I think Miss Hodgkins’s friends have been very ill advised to send in at all. In 39 “Washerwoman in Brittany” [FH0556] there is positively no perspective, no attention to values. The water at the back appears to be going uphill, and the figure in front is positively chaotic in its anatomy. It is impossible to take such a crude and formless composition seriously. Miss Hodgkins’s other picture “Tunny Boats Concarneau” (48) [FH0533] is not quite so bad, but here again there is a glaring contempt for accurate drawing.”