Roger Bissière and the Académie Ranson

Flora Scales returned from New Zealand to France in December 1935. In 1936 she studied painting under the tutelage of Roger Bissière (1886-1964) at the Académie Ranson in Paris. Bissière, a noted member of l'École de Paris and eminent art writer, was a charismatic teacher who would have respected Scales's self motivation and independence, while reinforcing the modernist principles of art to which she had been introduced by Edmund D. Kinzinger in St Tropez and Munich in the early 1930s.

Bissière admitted to finding the idea of art as something that could be taught quite incongruous. His notes to students contained practical solutions to problems of method, all the while warning them that this practicality was only part of the whole; that they must in the end rely on themselves, on their own sensibility and heart, at which stage they would no longer need his help.

At the Académie Ranson, Bissière also advised his students to learn and improve with each effort rather than to aim for a ‘reussi’ or a finished and ‘successful’ outcome that might please a potential buyer. Deeply influenced by this notion, for the next forty-one years, between 1934-1975, Scales did not exhibit or sell her work. The commercial art world was not one inhabited by her teachers – Hans Hofmann, E.D. Kinzinger or Bissiѐre – whose concerns lay solely with the authenticity of expression and the autonomous nature of the process of painting, to which they gave spiritual and ethical properties.

Later, reflecting on her teachers from this period, Scales remarked, “I took advantage of their brains pushing me on. I made use of them as a step up the ladder. The main thing is to forget you’ve been influenced. I didn’t want to be like anybody. I wanted to be a little uncommon, unusual.” (The Notebooks of Marjorie de Lange recording conversations with Flora Scales, 1982-1983)

Among Scales’s papers comprising Untitled [Loose Leaf Pages] [BC112], is a printed page titled “Academie Ranson, 7, Rue Joseph Bara, 7”, signed “Roger Bissiere” [pg 5, BC112, fig. 1]. Further, handwritten notes presumed by Scales, also among these papers include 2 pages titled “Notes from Academie Bissiere” and are numbered points 1-16 in French matching the contents on page 5 [pp 28-29, BC112, fig. 2-4].

Page 5 [fig. 1] was originally the property of Janet Paul, Art Librarian, Alexander Turnbull Library, 1971-1980. In 1983 Paul permanently loaned it to the collection of Flora Scales's papers held at the library, presumably because it matched the handwritten notes in the file.

Correspondence in August 2025 between B. de Lange and Isabelle Bissière, Roger Bissière’s granddaughter, Isabelle writes, “I'm sending you the "precepts of Bissière" [fig. 5]…as well as some documents (Académie Ranson poster [fig. 6] and postcard [fig. 7] with my grandmother Renée Meurisse [left], wife of the painter Louis Latapie, also a teacher at the Academy) which were reproduced in Roger Bissière's catalog raisonné published in 2001 by Ides et Calendes de Neuchâtel [Bissière: Catalogue raisonné 1886-1964 (3 volumes) by Isabelle Bissière and Virginie Duval, Ides et Calendes de Neuchâtel, Lausanne, Switzerland].

In 1934, Bissière opened a fresco workshop at the Académie Ranson. The names I've noted among his students are: Vieira da Silva and Arpad Szenes, Manessier, Vera Pagava, Charlotte Henschel, Bertholle, Wacker...”

The "precepts of Bissière" Isabelle mention also match page 5 from Untitled [Loose Leaf Pages] [BC112, fig. 5].

This page translates as the following:

ACADEMIE RANSON

7, Rue Joseph Bara, 7

Don't just throw yourself onto your paper or canvas and don't begin covering them randomly.

Look at your model for a long time and only start drawing or painting when you know what you want to do.

Never draw a line, never place a colour without asking yourself why you are giving them such a form, such a direction, such a surface or such a colour.

If your drawing is bad, don't hope to improve it by painting - on the contrary you will only make it worse.

Do not tackle all the problems at once. Do one at a time or you will get lost in their complexity.

Painting, like drawing lives through connections. Never consider one part isolated from all the others.

Don't copy nature, make a choice among the elements that it offers you.

With nature endeavour to bring complex forms to simple ones and the closer you will come to the essential ones - cube, triangle, cone, pyramid, cylinder, circle etc…the more expressive your work will be.

Don't think that using more colours will make a more colourful painting. On the contrary the most sober palette is the most expressive. / A tone is only beautiful when it is suggested.

Learn to work logically, without relying on chance. You are in charge of your painting, never give in to its demands.

Be sincere and don't express yourself in a manner contrary to your temperament.

Recognise your qualities and your faults and make the most of them. All great artists have had the courage to realise this.

Don't try to do a "successful" drawing or painting; that has no interest. Rather look to learn something and take a step forward.

When you are constrained by these guidelines you will have a discipline and a method whereby you will avoid much trial and error.

Then, and only then you will be able to ignore these guidelines, rely on your strengths, that is to say, your own sensitivity, for as a last resort it is the heart that justifies everything and then I can no longer do anything for you.

Roger BISSIERE