Private exhibition at the home of Flora Scales

“In 1977 [1976] when Helen’s eyesight was starting to fail and she desperately wanted to return to Europe but was lacking in funds, I held an afternoon tea and exhibition of her paintings in Helen’s flat and invited my women’s painting class and a few other friends along. A number of Helen’s paintings were purchased, enough for her to go back to France. On her departure she gave me her precious mahogany painting box. Later, when I heard that her eyesight appeared to have stabilised enough to continue painting, I shipped it back to her in France.” – ‘A Friend of Flora’ by Gretchen Albrecht, Flora Scales, The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatū, Nelson, New Zealand, 2018, pg 42

Held at the home of Flora Scales, 38 Brentwood Avenue, Mt Eden, Auckland, New Zealand. This exhibition must have taken place between late July, when unsold works from the exhibition Helen F.V. Scales were returned to Scales by Peter McLeavey in Wellington, and December 1976 when Scales returned to France.

Linda Gill attended the exhibition and purchased a work, Orchard with Plum Tree [1] [BC071]. Gill’s diary, dated 27 August reads, “I visited Flora Scales to pay for my painting. She came to the back door wearing an eyeshade blue on top & green underneath – she was “cleaning”. She wasn’t too happy with the painting, the seascape that I didn’t want [Gill had taken 2 paintings home to decide which to purchase].
F.S. ‘Too much like a watercolour’
L.G. ‘That’s all right isn’t it?’
F.S. ‘It’s not supposed to!’ Very firmly.
L.G. ‘It must be a very strange experience to come back to New Zealand after an absence of fifty years.’
F.S. ‘Yes a very strange & most unsatisfactory experience.’
F.S. ‘I think it must be hard to paint with yellow – so easy for it to become crude and glaring.’ (looking at Monet Waterlilies – all yellow)
F.S. ‘Wanting to paint & not being a millionaire, didn’t live comfortably – all that standing up at the easel I became most frightfully sick.’
F.S. ‘I think I should like to live among the trees. Among greens.’
F.S. ‘Travelling to St Tropez by train – most wonderful landscape…the farmhouses are pink and they rise straight out of the grapevines which are sometimes quite yellow.’
Mentioned paintings by Marchand in the Courtauld Institute.”