The Women of Pumpkin Cottage

"Celebrate the female artists who painted at Pumpkin Cottage, led by Wellington artist and art teacher James Nairn, in and around the late 1800s. These artists were exploring impressionism, the significant new art movement, which began in Paris in the 1800s.

The women painters were few, and often had to push societal boundaries for the right to have their own practice. Their story is one of strength and determination as they sought the freedom to paint. Featuring the work of Frances Hodgkins, Dorothy Richmond, Mabel Hill, Mary Tripe and Flora Scales, among others." - https://www.expressions.org.nz

Exhibition accompanying text by Christina McGregor (curator):
When Flora Scales (1887 – 1985) left Wellington for England in 1928, she did not have a home or a family of her own. She was itinerant, dependant on friends for a roof over her head and painted smaller works that could be easily transported. As one of the Pumpkin Cottage painters who visited the cottage during her early career, being able to paint was always most important, and dictated all that she did. But her sacrifices were many.

Flora Scales was born in Wellington in 1887. She was brought up with a progressive education, a place in society as one of the most influential families and an early recognition of her artistic talent, which was focused on the drawing and painting of animals, particularly horses which she loved. She was sent to London at the age of 21 to study at the ultra-conservative W. Frank Calderon School of Animal Painting.  The students attended life, portrait, and composition classes as well as indoor and outdoor sessions with the animals, building a technical knowledge which provided the foundation on which her future development was based.

Four years later Flora returned to the family home in Lower Hutt, to a life of a young socialite as well as a hard-working artist, and a keen contributor to the New Zealand art world. Between 1912 and 1919 Scales entered twenty-five exhibitions and joined the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, often making painting excursions to Pumpkin Cottage. In 1919, when her 61-year-old father George Herbert Scales ended his marriage in order to marry his 28-year-old secretary, the privileged life of Flora collapsed. The family moved to Nelson to begin a new life, growing strawberries and apples, and working as household servants. In 1928, after the death of her father left her a small legacy, and at the age of 40 and unmarried, Flora escaped the commitments of her family and left for London, seeking independence and freedom.

Flora arrived in Paris in the spring of 1931 in St Tropez (South France), met fellow New Zealand female artists Maude Burge, Frances Hodgkins and Gwen Knight who were attending a summer school. Flora was searching for intellectual challenges and encouraged by Maud, travelled to Munich to the cutting-edge Modernism and enlightened teaching at the Hans Hofmann Schule für Bildende Kunst. Flora’s daring adventure of the school resulted in a shift in her painting style, abandoning traditional systems of perspective and focussing on colour, shifting planes, and geometric shapes. For some time, Flora was mainly known in New Zealand for her influence on the young artist Mountford Tosswill Woollaston (1910-1998) and, indirectly on the fifteen-year-old Colin McCahon (1919-1987), having shared the ideas discussed at the Hofmann School.

Returning to Paris in 1935 to the Académie Ranson in Paris, Flora met the unorthodox Professor Roger Bissière who taught her that artists must rely on their own sensibility and heart, and not create work for a potential buyer. Deeply influenced by this notion, for the next forty-one years, Flora did not exhibit or sell her work. She lived frugally, devoting her attention to her work without the distractions of competition or self-promotion.

During this time however Scales suffered blows. During World War II she was arrested as a British citizen and had two years of internment in Frontstalag 142 (a WWII camp in France). On her release she discovered that her stored artworks had been stolen from Paris by Nazi art raiders. Hundreds of her works were lost including a large number of nude studies. When she was repatriated to England in 1944, Flora lived with her long-time friends, the Kalachnikoff family at their home in Bry-sur-Marne and this was her base in France for the next 20 years. Even though Flora continued to paint throughout her life and her importance in a historical context was considerable, her first solo exhibition in a New Zealand public gallery was not until 1975, organised by Colin McCahon and the Auckland Art Gallery. Flora was 88 years old.

The search for Flora Scales’ stolen artwork from Paris in the early 1940s continues. 

"Flora Scales and The Women of Pumpkin Cottage" by Lizzie Bisley, an essay by written in 2023 for florascales.com on the occasion of the exhibition The Women of Pumpkin Cottage can be read here.