Timeline

Birth of Charles Hastings Stuart Snow (Flora Scales’s grandfather), Langton Lodge, Dorset, England, 21 May

Birth of Helen Clara Piers (Flora Scales’s grandmother), Weymouth, England, 9 November

Birth of Alfred St George Hamersley, Great Haseley, Oxford, England, 8 October

Marriage of Charles Hastings Stuart Snow and Helen Clara Piers, Preston, Weymouth, Dorset, England, 25 June

Birth of George Herbert Scales (Flora Scales’s father), Essex, England, 11 September

Birth of Gertrude Maynard Snow (Flora Scales’s mother), Bristol, England, 5 August

Charles Hastings and Helen Clara Snow emigrate to New Zealand following the price failure of cotton in England. They travel on the Lord Burleigh with children Rochfort (b.10 August, 1851), Isabella Maud (b.29 April, 1853), Ernest Hastings (b.26 September, 1855) and Gertrude Maynard. They settle at Langton Lodge, Aurora Terrace, Wellington.

Birth of Charles D’Oyly Snow (Flora Scales's uncle), Christchurch, New Zealand, 9 February

Birth of Daines Barrington Snow (Flora Scales's uncle), Wellington, New Zealand, 21 May

Marriage of Isabella Maud Snow and Alfred St George Hamersley, Wellington, New Zealand, 25 October. Isabella and Alfred went on to have seven children, Hugh St George, Helen Constance, Edward, Cecil, Harold, Maud and Alfred.

Birth of Hugh St George Hamersley (first child of Isabella Maud and Alfred St George Hamersley), Timaru, New Zealand, 11 November

George Herbert Scales arrives in New Zealand on the Duke of Athol, 29 January

Birth of Helen Constance (Connie) Hamersley (second child of Isabella Maud and Alfred St George Hamersley), New Zealand

Deed of Settlement between G. H. Scales and Gertrude Maynard Snow is signed, trustees, W. H. Fitzherbert & Hugh Gully, 12 February

Marriage of G. H. Scales and G. M. Snow, Wellington, New Zealand, 13 February. George and Gertrude Scales spend their honeymoon at Te Maire, the house of John Orbell Bidwill and Sarah Bonella Bidwill, on the Pihautea property, Kahutara, South Wairarapa, New Zealand. Their first family home is Atiamuri, Bellevue Rd, Lower Hutt, New Zealand.

George Herbert Scales (1858-1928), Flora Scales’s father
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Gertrude Maynard Snow (1859-1948), Flora Scales’s mother
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Birth of Edward Herbert Athol Scales (Flora Scales’s brother), Wellington, New Zealand, 9 July

Birth of Cecil Hastings Jack Scales (Flora Scales’s brother), Wellington, New Zealand, 29 June

G. H. Scales joins the Wellington Club, New Zealand

Birth of Reginald John (Jack) Reeves, England, 21 February

Birth of George Arthur Maynard Scales (Flora Scales’s brother), Wellington, New Zealand, 16 April

Birth of Ella Lilian Rowe, Melbourne, Australia

Birth of Gertrude Maud Marjorie Scales (Flora Scales’s sister), Wellington, New Zealand, 8 November

Helen F. V. Scales (Flora) attends Miss Haase’s Private Day School, Lower Hutt, New Zealand

G. H. Scales, Wellington auctioneer and insurance agent, is secretary to the National Conference of the Freight Reduction Movement (F.R.M.) which brought farmers up against the shipping companies to force wool freight rates down to Australian rates. This is a turning point in George Scales’s life. With the greater prosperity that ensues he begins the building of Kuhawai the family house on five hundred acres of land in the Western Hutt hills between Petone and Lower Hutt, above the Percy family home. In this he follows the lead of the Riddiford and von Zedlitz families, for example, who see Lower Hutt as a safe haven from the disease-ridden water and sewerage systems of Wellington. The Beauchamp family move to Karori for similar reasons.

Registration of George H. Scales Pacific Ltd.

Flora Scales, aged about 11, with her brother, Jack, aged about 9, 1898
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Flora Scales attends Pipitea Private School, Thorndon, Wellington, New Zealand

Flora attends a school sports meeting held at her home, Atiamuri, where prizes are distributed by Gertrude Scales. Flora wins the under-13 walking race and the under-13 three-legged race along with P. Higginson, 8 November

Watercolour by Gertrude Maynard Scales, 1900
Inscription lower margin reads: "View from our old house, ‘Atiamuri’, our front gate. Ludlam Gardens, Wainui hills in distance."
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

The house, Kuhawai, built by George Scales for his family in the early 1900s on the Western Hutt hills, New Zealand, c.1920s. Correspondence Miss Vera Ellen, President of the Petone Historical Society, Lower Hutt, New Zealand, to B. de Lange, 31.01.1996, advises that the house was moved or demolished when the land was subdivided for the suburb of Maungaraki approx 1960-62. It is now incorporated into State Highway 2.
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Flora Scales, 1901, aged 14, mounted side saddle on “Brunette”
Photo: Bidwill family album
The owner of this photograph album is Florence Marjorie Bidwill (1886-1952), daughter of John and Sarah Bidwill, contemporary and friend of Flora Scales. The two families were close friends. George and Gertrude Scales spent their honeymoon at Pihautea, Wairarapa, New Zealand, and there were frequent subsequent visits. 

Flora Scales, 1901, aged 14, on “Brunette”
Photo: Bidwill family album
The owner of this photograph album is Florence Marjorie Bidwill (1886-1952), daughter of John and Sarah Bidwill, contemporary and friend of Flora Scales. The two families were close friends. George and Gertrude Scales spent their honeymoon at Pihautea, Wairarapa, New Zealand, and there were frequent subsequent visits. 

Flora Scales, studio portrait, 1902, aged 15
Photo: Bidwill family album
The owner of this photograph album is Florence Marjorie Bidwill (1886-1952), daughter of John and Sarah Bidwill, contemporary and friend of Flora Scales. The two families were close friends. George and Gertrude Scales spent their honeymoon at Pihautea, Wairarapa, New Zealand, and there were frequent subsequent visits. 

Flora Scales attends Miss Croasdaile Bowen’s School, Armagh St, Christchurch, New Zealand, for two years, 1903-1904

Concurrently Flora Scales attends the Canterbury College School of Art, Christchurch, New Zealand, for two years, 1903-1904. She attends morning classes and evening classes twice weekly for the three terms per year. In the second and third terms of 1903 she attends a “Nude” class in the morning. In the second term of 1903 there are two pupils in the class including Scales and in the third term only Scales. During her two years at the School Scales did not sit any examinations or win any prizes. The Head of the School is George H. Elliott who holds this position from 1886-1905. Others teaching around this time are A. W. Walsh, J. L. Balfour, A. Ager, H. M. Johnston and Miss A. E. Abbott. Among her contemporaries at the School are Leonard Booth, Cecil Kelly and Margaret Stoddart. – Information kindly provided by R. N. Erwin, Head of Reference Library, University of Canterbury Library, Christchurch, New Zealand (now Macmillan Brown Library - Te Puna Rakahau o Macmillan Brown, University of Canterbury Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha, Christchurch, New Zealand), 11 April 1983, from Canterbury College School of Art roll books, Ref 71911, 71902, 71898

Prospectus, Canterbury College, School of Art, Christchurch, New Zealand, 1902
Photo: Courtesy Macmillan Brown Library - Te Puna Rakahau o Macmillan Brown, Christchurch, New Zealand, 2019

Leslie Balfour, Florence Marjorie Bidwill (F.M.B.), Flora Scales, Arthur F. Martin, feeding lambs at Pihautea, Wairarapa, New Zealand, January 1904
Photo: Bidwill family album
The owner of this photograph album is Florence Marjorie Bidwill (1886-1952), daughter of John and Sarah Bidwill, contemporary and friend of Flora Scales. The two families were close friends. George and Gertrude Scales spent their honeymoon at Pihautea, Wairarapa, New Zealand, and there were frequent subsequent visits. 

Flora Scales painting outdoors, Pihautea, Wairarapa, New Zealand, April 1906
Photo: Bidwill family album
The owner of this photograph album is Florence Marjorie Bidwill (1886-1952), daughter of John and Sarah Bidwill, contemporary and friend of Flora Scales. The two families were close friends. George and Gertrude Scales spent their honeymoon at Pihautea, Wairarapa, New Zealand, and there were frequent subsequent visits. 

Flora Scales exhibits New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, Wellington

Flora Scales is bridesmaid at the wedding of Miss Olive Cicely Mildred Heaton, Lower Hutt, New Zealand, 16 November

Flora Scales and Gertrude Scales recorded as members of the Hutt Golf Club, New Zealand

Flora Scales engaged to marry John Percy of Lower Hutt, New Zealand. The engagement is called off as Percy is thought unsuitable by Scales’s family.

Flora Scales, studio portrait, London, England, c.1908
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Birth of Harry Westacott, Clapham, London, England, 3 April

Flora Scales awarded a scholarship to extend her tuition at the W. Frank Calderon School of Animal Painting, London, England, from three years to four, as reported by ‘Marsden School Old Girls’ Notes’, Te Kura, 1910, pg 19.

Flora Scales’s address is recorded as 54 Baker Street, Marylebone, London W1, England.

Flora Scales exhibits Cattle mustering in New Zealand (oil on canvas) [Location Unknown] at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London, England. In conversation with A. de Lange, January 1982, Scales describes this as a painting of a “white shirted rider on a brown horse riding away with, I think, a stock whip.”

Flora Scales’s address recorded as 9 Queen Anne’s-gardens, Bedford Park, London West, England, The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 1911 Catalogue, https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/exhibition-catalogue/ra-sec-vol143-1911, pg 76

Registration of Geo. H. Scales Ltd. (G.H.S.)

Flora Scales travels home to New Zealand with her father. They visit family in America and detour to view the almost completed Panama Canal, 22 July

Flora Scales in conversation with Janet Paul, Rotorua, New Zealand, 27 March 1979: “I went to everything, to the Academy shows. Whenever I went to town I would look into McGregor Wright’s studio.” Scales may have also have visited the exhibition of British art in Wellington, New Zealand.

Death of Helen Clara Snow (nee Piers), Hamilton, New Zealand, 30 March

Marriage of Marjorie Scales and Reginald John Reeves, Lower Hutt, New Zealand, 11 November

Reginald John Reeves becomes Marine Superintendent for G. H. Scales's fleet, Ysabel, Raupo and Rona

Flora Scales exhibits
*New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, Wellington
*Auckland Society of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition

Flora Scales returns to New Zealand after visiting Siam (now Thailand). This journey may have included her visit to India with Margaret Hutchinson. While in India, she paints a polo pony belonging to Margaret’s brother, John, and a racehorse belonging to his friend [Locations Unknown]. Margaret and Flora also visit Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) on this voyage.

Flora Scales joins Academy Studio Club which holds classes in Wellington each Wednesday, and, in the summer, makes painting excursions to Pumpkin Cottage, Silverstream, Upper Hutt, New Zealand

Flora Scales exhibits New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, Wellington

Rosebush on northern wall of Pumpkin Cottage. Flora Scales is known to have attended painting sessions at this location and is recorded as having planted an old rose beside the painted pumpkin sign sometime after 1914, perhaps in memory of her two brothers, Jack and George, who died in 1915 in the First World War. Image courtesy Upper Hutt City Library, New Zealand, Heritage Collections, New Zealand, https://uhcl.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/16010

Birth of Ellen Patience (Patty) Reeves (only child of Marjorie and Reginald John Reeves), New Zealand, 2 July

Flora Scales exhibits
*New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, Wellington
*Otago Art Society Annual Exhibition, Dunedin
*Auckland Society of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition

Flora Scales, Miss J. Newton and Mrs Prince organise an exhibition of sketches to raise money for the Trench Comforts Fund, as reported by The Auckland Star, 21 July

Flora Scales enlists in Voluntary Aid Detachment of the Red Cross (V.A.D.), Taumaru Military Convalescent Hospital, Lowry Bay, Wellington, New Zealand, where she works as a cook, 1917-1919

Voluntary Aid Detachment of the Red Cross (V.A.D.), Taumaru Military Hospital, Lowry Bay, Wellington, c.1917
Flora Scales, seated centre, back row
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Cover, The Taumaru Trifler: Third Anniversary edition, Lowry Bay, Wellington, New Zealand, March 1919, signed LR F Scales [BC143]
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Flora Scales exhibits
*Auckland Society of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, June
*New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, Wellington, 29 September
*Otago Art Society Annual Exhibition, Dunedin, 12 November
*Canterbury Society of Arts Annual Exhibition, Christchurch

One reviewer, the Dominion’s “Lay Figure”, writes of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Exhibition, Wellington, 1917, “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, 1 October 1917, pg 6

The Dominion’s “Lay Figure” also submits his opinion on the work of Frances Hodgkins in the same exhibition, which he delivers from his safe seat in the house of Academic Art, “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.” – ‘N.Z. Academy of Fine Arts, Notes on the pictures’ by “The Lay Figure”, Dominion, 6 October 1917, pg 3

Captain Reginald John Reeves sails the SY Aurora, famous for its expeditions to Antarctica, under Douglas Mawson and Ernest Shackleton, from Wellington, New Zealand via Newcastle, Australia, bound for Iquique, Chile, loaded with coal, 9 February. Reeves's intention upon returning to England is to join the Royal Navy.

Captain Reginald John Reeves, far right, on board Ernest Shackleton's SY Aurora, 1917
Inscription verso: Patty's father without cap & hand to his chin
Photo: Courtesy Scales family records

Death of Captain Reginald John Reeves, SY Aurora declared lost at sea, 2 January. The Aurora disappears with all hands without trace and is posted missing by Lloyds of London, England, as a suspected casualty of the First World War. Three anchors and some anchor cable, which lie at the bottom of Commonwealth Bay, Antarctica, are the only known remains.

Flora Scales exhibits
*Canterbury Society of Arts Annual Exhibition, Christchurch, March
*New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Sketch Exhibition, Wellington, April
*Auckland Society of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, April
*New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, Wellington, October

Flora Scales exhibits
*Otago Art Society Annual Exhibition, Dunedin, 29 January (arranged as the 1918 Annual Exhibition but held over due to Armistice Day celebrations, 11 November 1918)
*Canterbury Society of Arts Annual Exhibition, Christchurch, 27 March
*New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Sketch Exhibition, Wellington, 2 May
*Nelson Suter Art Society Sketch Exhibition, 22 May
*Otago Art Society Sketch Exhibition, Dunedin, June
*Free Kindergarten Association Fundraiser Exhibition, Wellington, July
*New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, Wellington, October
*Otago Art Society Annual Exhibition, Dunedin, November

Between 1906 and 1919, Flora Scales includes work in 28 exhibitions. Except for two illustrations in the Canterbury Society of Arts Catalogues dated 1918 and 1919, only titles of the exhibited works are now known. The titles suggest they are mainly studies of animals, rural scenes and landscapes. Just two figurative or portrait studies are mentioned.

Reviews speak of the small size of her work, her rich, bright colours, and her interest in transient effects of light and shade. Within these parameters she is apparently building on her academic training to become more impressionistic in style. She is remarked upon for her bold, decisive style and her daring use of colour.

Gertrude Scales, Marjorie and Patience Reeves travel to England to fulfill a promise made by Marjorie to her husband, Reginald John Reeves, that she would introduce Patience to his parents

G. H. Scales awarded MBE for services in shipping matters and other patriotic work, 26 June

G. H. Scales leases Kuhawai as convalescent home for New Zealand nursing sisters for the duration of 1920

G. H. Scales announces separation and divorce from Gertrude Scales upon her return from England

Flora Scales receives letter from her father allowing her £120 per annum. It has not been possible to confirm whether this was New Zealand pounds or English pounds. This was considered at the time to be an adequate amount.

Following the announcement of her parents’ separation, Flora Scales, with Gertrude Scales and Marjorie and Patience Reeves, stay with “many good, loyal friends” in Wellington and the Hutt Valley, and then move to Nelson, New Zealand

Gertrude Scales, Flora Scales and Marjorie Reeves build a house called Ikhona in Nelson, New Zealand, with a small studio attached to the garage. They grow apples and strawberries and work during the fruit picking season at Kirkpatrick’s canning factory along the road.

Academy of Fine Arts Studio Club clubroom destroyed by fire and a great loss of work by Flora Scales, D. K. Richmond and Mrs E. L. Prince (there had also been a clubroom fire in 1913), as reported by The Evening Post, 22 March

“Miss Flora Scales will hold Classes in Landscape Drawing and Painting on SATURDAY Afternoons. For particulars, apply after July 2nd, Beach Road, Tahuna (Dr Lucas’s House) Telephone 5775”, advertisement in Nelson Evening Mail, issue LIV, 26 June

Flora Scales exhibits
*Canterbury Society of Arts Annual Exhibition, Christchurch, 11 March
*Auckland Society of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, April
*New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, Wellington
*New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Sketch Exhibition, Wellington, May
*E. Murray Fuller Gallery, Wellington, October
*Otago Art Society Annual Exhibition, Dunedin, 10 November
* Academy of Fine Arts Studio Club, Wellington

G. H. Scales travels to Europe via Seattle, USA

New Zealand Truth reports “The Scales Divorce”, 19 March

Flora Scales’s etching Homecoming [BC124] is selected from E. Murray Fuller’s Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand, to be included in the Australian Painter-Etchers' Society First Annual Exhibition, Sydney, Australia, 7-25 June

An exhibition of New Zealand women painters opens, E. Murray Fuller’s Gallery, Vickers House, corner Woodward Street and The Terrace, Wellington, New Zealand, 1 August. Includes landscape and animal sketches by Flora Scales. Other exhibitors are Margaret Stoddard, D. K. Richmond and Frances Hodgkins.

Flora Scales exhibits
*The Australian Painter-Etchers' Society First Annual Exhibition, 7 June
*E. Murray Fuller Gallery, Wellington, 1 August
*Canterbury Society of Arts Annual Exhibition
*New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition

Settlement of divorce, G. H. Scales and Gertrude Maynard Scales, 9 September

Flora Scales gives weekly lessons to neighbour’s child, Valerie May Stevens, aged 14, who remembers a still life study of “a man’s old boots”, which could be related to the artwork, New Shoes for Old [Location Unknown], sent by Scales to the British Empire Exhibition, Wembley, London, England, 1924

Birth of Patrick Stanley Tennent, Takapau, New Zealand, 17 December

Flora Scales, top right, with her sister Marjorie Reeves, left. Her niece Patience (Patty) Reeves sits on the step below her aunt. Stoke, Nelson, New Zealand, c.1924
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Flora Scales, right, taking tea on the verandah of their Nelson home, Ikhona, with her sister Marjorie Reeves. Inscription verso, in Marjorie’s hand: "Flora and self on verandah of our house, Ikhona, Stoke, Nelson, New Zealand. Taken about 1924"
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Marriage of George Herbert Scales, aged 64, and Ella Lilian Rowe, aged 31, Knox Church, Christchurch, New Zealand, 18 February

Flora Scales exhibits
*New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, Wellington
* Nelson Sketch Collection, March
*Nelson Suter Art Society Sketch Exhibition, 7 September
*Otago Art Society Annual Exhibition, Dunedin, November

The Nelson Evening Mail’s “Plunket Fete” mentions Tahuna Beach, watercolour by Flora Scales [Location Unknown], Nelson Evening Mail, 10 March

Gertrude Scales, Flora Scales and Marjorie Reeves sell or lease Ikhona, their house in Nelson, New Zealand

Flora Scales and Marjorie Reeves take work at Langley Dale Station near Blenheim, New Zealand, owned by Mrs W. Adams. Flora as a cook, Marjorie as a lady’s maid. Patience Reeves is schooled with Mrs Adams’s five grandchildren, by a governess.

Gertrude Scales buys house in Tahunanui, Nelson, New Zealand

Flora Scales corresponds with Mr J. McDonald about sending work to the 1924 British Empire Exhibition, Wembley, London, England. She writes to McDonald from 16 Glover Road, Hawera, New Zealand, on the 16 September and from 42 Ngamotu Beach, New Plymouth, on the 11 November [possibly, month illegible].

Some of the paintings selected for the British Empire Exhibition in Wembley, London, England, are shown at the Wellington Art Gallery, New Zealand, including New Shoes for Old [Location Unknown], 8-14 December

Flora Scales exhibits
*Auckland Society of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition
*New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition
*British Empire Exhibition, Wellington Art Gallery, New Zealand, 8 December

Above: Souvenir of the New Zealand Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition, Wembley, London, 1924., Tanner, Wellington, New Zealand, 1924, cover
Photo: Courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand

Below: Souvenir of the British Empire Exhibition, Fleetway Press, London, 1924, cover
Photo: Courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand

Flora Scales paints Eastern Extension Cable Company's ship, "Patrol" in Wellington Harbour [BC122], New Zealand, 11 March

Birth of Boris Kalachnikoff, Paris, France, 17 May

Flora Scales exhibits
*Paintings and Etchings: Important Auction Sale, Messrs J. H. Bethune & Co., Wellington, New Zealand, 14 February
*Chamber of Commerce Exhibition, Chamber of Commerce Buildings, Auckland, March
*British Empire Exhibition, Palace of Arts, Wembley, London, England, 23 April
*New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Sketch Exhibition, Wellington, 9 May
*Nelson Suter Art Society At Home at the Art Gallery, 1 December

Flora Scales exhibits New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Sketch Exhibition, Wellington, May

Flora Scales listed as a member of the National Art Association of New Zealand

Flora Scales exhibits The Beach Track [Location Unknown] at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Sketch Exhibition, Wellington, as reported by The Evening Post, 15 May

Between 1920 and 1927 Flora Scales includes work in 29 exhibitions. The subject matter expands to include shipping scenes, seascapes and scenes of rural life, such as ploughing and hay carts, which perhaps reflect her personal life in Nelson, working as an orchardist, as much as the enduring influence of the Barbizon and Impressionist Schools of the late-19th Century.

Contemporary reviews of the Art Society exhibitions in Christchurch, Nelson, Dunedin and Auckland, as well as the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual and Autumn Exhibitions in Wellington, refer to her “impressionism” and “extraordinary simplicity and economy of means”, “wonderful effects of light” and “delicate atmospheric effects”. Although some reviews note the sketchy nature of some of her work, as if it was unfinished, in 1926 the arts reviewer for the Nelson Evening Mail, 30 November, claimed “Miss Scales is certainly one of New Zealand’s most promising artists.”

Constance Hamersley
Concarneau. Brittany
oil on canvas on board
229 x 320mm
Private collection, New Zealand
Inscription verso: To Aunt Gertrude from Constance Hamersley Concarneau, Brittany by C H 1928
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Madame Wadja’s restaurant, 10 rue de la Grande Chaumière, Paris, France, where Flora Scales and Bobby Kalachnikoff would sometimes take afternoon tea
Photo: Courtesy https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187147-d720151-Reviews-Wadja-Paris_Ile_de_France.html

Flora Scales returns to New Zealand briefly before departing once more for France, "feeling my way whether I was going to be a painter in France or an orchardist in New Zealand" - Flora Scales in conversation with Janet Paul, Rotorua, New Zealand, 27 March 1979

Death of Rochfort Snow, Christchurch, New Zealand, 16 March

Death of Alfred St George Hamersley, Bournemouth, England, 25 February

Patience Reeves attends boarding school in Christchurch, New Zealand

The Evening Post’s “London Personals” reports: “Another New Zealander who is studying painting on the Continent is Miss Flora Scales, and Miss Dudley [Winifred S. Dudley of Wellington, New Zealand] hopes to be with her also later on.” – The Evening Post, 12 May

Flora Scales takes the young [around 6-years-old] Boris Kalachnikoff to Le Tréport, Normandy, France, for the holidays

Birth of Neil Robertson Ostenfeld, Greymouth, New Zealand, 8 December

Page from Untitled [Loose Leaf Pages] [BC112]

Flora Scales's residency papers, Munich, Germany, 1932-1933, pg 1, reads:
Family name, first name. Marital status. Profession: Scales, Helen Flora Victoria. Single. Art painter (student).
Date of Birth. Religion. 24 May 1887. Church of England
Place of birth: town, region, country: Wellington, New Zealand
Parents: name, profession, places of birth and death: George Herbert and Marjorie Scales, née Snow [??] in Christchurch, New Zealand
Nationality and ID papers: British Empire – England – British passport issued in Wellington, 19.1.28, no. 38992, valid until 19.1.1933
Street and house number / property owner / registered / deregistered / to: Seinfeldstrasse 12 / Pension / 14.10.32 / 17.10.32 Reimundstrasse[?] 12/1 / Fischinger / 17.10.32 / 10.6.1933 / Paris

(Translation kindly supplied from now obsolete style of handwriting, Suetterlin, German, by Dr. Nelson Wattie, Wellington, New Zealand, 2021)

Photo: Courtesy Munich State Archives, Munich, Germany, 29.05.2020

Flora Scale's residency papers, Munich, Germany, 1932-1933, pg 2, reads:
Residences in recent years, departure, purpose of stay: Paris [?], previously Christchurch, New Zealand, attendance at art school
Signed on 7 Nov. 1932: Flora Scales

Bottom left shows two categories: Card filed and Signed. The date (7 November 1932) and the signed line have been bracketed together so that the date refers to the signed category and not to Card filed.

(Translation kindly supplied from now obsolete style of handwriting, Suetterlin, German, by Dr. Nelson Wattie, Wellington, New Zealand, 2021)

Photo: Courtesy Munich State Archives, Munich, Germany, 29.05.2020

Scales's document of registration in the city of Munich shows her British passport issued 19.01.1928 is valid until 19.01.1933, these dates suggest that for the last five months of her time in Munich her passport was invalid. Enquires were made to the State Archives of Munich, June 2021, Christine Maurer in response to Ms. De Lange: “Unfortunately we have no explanation for the expired passport of Helen Flora Viktoria Scales nor can we tell whether this was a problem in the 1930s. She probably lived as a sub-tenant in the apartement or house of a person named Fischinger. Maybe she was overlooked at the controls or the controls did not take place between 19.01.1933 and 10.06.1933. But we can not tell you for sure if this was the case.”

Under the tuition of E. D. Kinzinger at the Hofmann School, Flora Scales studies to achieve space, volume and movement on the picture plane without recourse to traditional methods of perspective. She embraces the Modernist concept of autonomy in art as one which validates the artist in society as a genuine creator and visionary.

Flora Scales witnesses the marching of the Sturmabteilung, or ‘Brown Shirts’, Munich, Germany. She remembers seeing Adolf Hitler’s luxury apartment at Prinzregentplatz, 16 and the eeriness of the great empty hotel in which she stays. She meets Maria Hofmann, who invites her to tea. She recalls the caution with which she was warned to approach the house, lest she draw attention by her visit.

Page from Untitled [Loose Leaf Pages] [BC112]
1932-1933
Courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Reference no. FS ms papers 1893

Flora Scales and Gwen Knight are the only two known Antipodean students to receive tuition at the Hofmann School of Fine Art, Munich, Germany

Between 1932 and 1938 Flora Scales and Boris Kalachnikoff spend several summer school holidays in St Tropez, France, staying at the house of Madame Coccoz. They also spend time during these holidays in Cagnes, France, staying in the rue Constantin Guys.

E. D. Kinzinger (1888-1963)Untitled1932
pencil and coloured pencil on paper
170 x 134mm
Collection of Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Reference no. A-253-028
Reproduced with the kind permission of Nancy Kinzinger
https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22450056

Gifted to Flora Scales by E. D. Kinzinger in c.1933, Scales in conversation with B. de Lange, 1983, “when he said goodbye forever.” The drawing is inscribed, "To Miss F Scales, Edmund D Kinzinger."

Toss Woollaston correspondence with Rodney Kennedy, held in E.H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand, ref. file SCALES, H.F.V. (Flora) CORRESPONDENCE 2A, labelled UL b
Photo: Courtesy E.H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki

Above and below: Toss Woollaston correspondence with Rodney Kennedy, headed "Mapua", held in E.H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand, ref. file SCALES, H.F.V. (Flora) CORRESPONDENCE 2A, labelled UL g-h
Photo: Courtesy E.H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki

He goes on to say, “As for Miss Scales’ self I can tell you now, independently of any surprise interpretation you may put upon it. She is sweet and kind and dignified, and utterly removed from sophistication and frivolity. She helped me, but she did not wish me to come too often after a time: we could only reiterate what I already had a clue to and she had told me must be thought about and I must not expect to be able to understand in a day, a month even, or a year. And she does not have visitors if she can help it: she conserves her time and energies as much as possible for study. Her attitude seems to be that to draw and paint is better than to discuss drawing and painting. She is not “arty”, not being afraid of being arty.” (E.H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand, ref. file SCALES, H.F.V. (Flora) CORRESPONDENCE 2A, labelled UL i-j)

Toss Woollaston correspondence with Rodney Kennedy, October, “One day I saw Miss Scales at the exhibition. It was wet & she had high boots and a funny coarse woolly brown dress. She is so dignified she seems to be able to do anything and not be ridiculous. She gave me formal good-day and a polite freeze. Having at first given way to my urgency and enthused about cubes and space-relations, and told me what a marvellous old man Cézanne was, how very wonderful Renoir, etc. etc., her attitude now seems to be ‘And that is all I can do for you’…” Toss Woollaston: A Life in Letters, ed. Jill Trevelyan, Te Papa Press, Wellington, New Zealand, 2004, pg 47

A press photograph published in the Northern Advocate, 9 October 1934, pg 8, showing eight paintings on an exhibition wall at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Wellington, New Zealand. There are three paintings by Flora Scales shown, all in identical frames – lower left, no. 146 Drapery, 3rd from lower left, no. 148 Still Life Group, 2nd from upper left, no. 147 Group.

The catalogue entries for exhibition catalogued the works as follows:

No. 146 Drapery £25.0.0
No. 147 Group £20.0.0
No. 148 Still Life Group £25.0.0

So far, this photograph is all that is known of the works shown in the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, 1934.

Photo: Northern Advocate, 9 October 1934, pg 8, with thanks to Kyla Mackenzie

Close-up of no. 146 Drapery by Flora Scales, New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Wellington, 1934
Photo: Northern Advocate, 9 October 1934, pg 8

Close-up of no. 147 Group by Flora Scales, New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Wellington, 1934
Photo: Northern Advocate, 9 October 1934, pg 8

Close-up of no. 148 Still Life Group by Flora Scales, New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Wellington, 1934
Photo: Northern Advocate, 9 October 1934, pg 8

A press photograph published in the Christchurch Sun, 24 October 1934, pg 24, showing Still Life by Flora Scales, New Zealand Society of Artists Second Exhibition, Christchurch, with the caption:

“Modernist Work at Arts Exhibition – "Still Life," by Flora Scales, one of the “modern” pictures included in the exhibition of the New Zealand Society of Artists in the Durham Street Art Gallery, Miss Scales has spent some years of study in France and Germany.”

The catalogue entries for exhibition catalogues the works as follows:

No. 292 Drapery £25.0.0
No. 293 Group £20.0.0
No. 294 The Old Harbour £20.0.0
No. 295 The Cactus NFS
No. 296 Still Life Group £25.0.0

So far, this photograph is all that is known of the works shown in the New Zealand Society of Artists Second Exhibition, 1934.

Photo: Christchurch Sun, 24 October 1934, pg 24

Marjorie Reeves and daughter Patience, aged 19, travel to England on SS Anglo-Canadian, March/April. This is a G. H. Scales ship engaged in the wool trade between Australasia and England and carries only six passengers. Marjorie and Patience have officers’ family accommodation. Patience meets Third Officer Harry Westacott.

Flora Scales travels Wellington, New Zealand, to London, England, on RMS Rangitata, 28 December

Drawing of Toulouse, France, by Boris Kalachnikoff
coloured pencil on paper
160 x 195mm
Inscription: UR Toulouse, LL Kalachnikoff Boris 1936
Photo: Courtesy de Lange Collection

Seated front left, Flora Scales beside Boris Kalachnikoff, who has his arm linked in hers. Kalachnikoff’s mother and brother stand behind. Seated front right unknown. South of France, 1936
Photo: Courtesy de Lange Collection

Bobby Kalachinikoff, seated. with his older brother, South of France, mid 1930s
Photo: Courtesy de Lange Collection

Gertrude Scales and Marjorie and Patience Reeves take up residence at Balmer Lawn, Brockenhurst, Hampshire, England

Flora Scales and Boris Kalachnikoff travel to England to briefly visit her family in Hampshire, England

Postcard from “Bobe” [Boris Kalachnikoff] to Flora Scales at 25 allée des Frênes, Ste Geneviève des Bois, France

Flora Scales paints Mediterranean Village [BC019] in St Tropez, France

Patience Reeves engaged to Harry Westacott, as reported by Christchurch Press, 2 June

Wedding reception for Patience (nee Reeves) and Harry Westacott, aboard HMS Shropshire, 29 April
L to R: Colonel and Mrs Hugh Hamersley (Patience’s mother), Harry Westacott, Patience Westacott, Elizabeth Everard (bridesmaid), Unknown (bestman)
Photo: Mills, Hawthorne, Harry Westacott 1910-1944: a tribute, H. Mills, Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, 1998, pp 3-4, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand

Hôtel Sube, St Tropez, France, 1939
Verso inscription (in Marjorie Hamersley's hand, Flora Scales's sister): “St Tropez where Lassie is. This was taken from the balcony outside our bedroom. It was raining as you can see from the wet quay.”

Letter Hélène Riboty, Archives Communals de Saint-Tropez, France, to Gérard Dubosson, researcher, Nelson, New Zealand, 03.04.2020: "Regarding the 1939 photograph [Quay and Hôtel Sube]. This one was taken from the Hôtel Sube. The building destroyed after the Second World War, was the Marché Gras [building with three arches facing the camera], a covered market for food retailers. Severely damaged during the explosion of the port by the Germans during the landing of Provence on August 15, 1944, the municipality did not want to keep it and it was destroyed. I have been in touch with the current owner of the Hôtel Sube who acquired it about ten years ago and unfortunately she had not found the old hotel records." 

Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Patience Westacott’s address, Jesmond Dene, Byway Little Place, Chichester, Sussex, England, 29 September

Death of Daines Barrington Snow, Campbelltown, NSW, Australia, 26 October

Birth of Diana Piers Westacott (first child of Patience and Harry Westacott), England, 13 May

Flora Scales in Paris, France, stringent food rationing, May

Flora Scales, as a British passport holder, arrested by French police, 7 December. According to undated notes in a book labelled “Scraps”, kept by her sister Marjorie Hamersley, Scales had been planning to go to Portugal at this time, “In June 1940 she [Scales] had arranged to meet a friend in Paris and they were to go to Portugal for painting but during the few days she was to be there the Germans came and took Paris. Flora was allowed to remain in her hotel but in December she was suddenly informed that she must leave Paris by train with many other British women – they were taken to a place somewhere near the Vosges Mountains [Besançon] and placed in Barracks which had just been vacated by French troops and which were filthy - the prisoners had to clean the Barracks and find what they could on the rubbish heaps for utensils for all purposes – nothing was prepared for them but eventually after some time they were moved to the Vosges Mts – to Vittel where they were properly housed and where Flora said they were delighted like children to find there were curtains and I think floor coverings and etc. Flora was ill in hospital part of the time and was allowed a special ration of milk. She returned to the camp but some time later was told by the Camp Commandant that she must leave the camp and go and live in Paris. This she did not want to do, but was made to go and her two years in Paris were a very terrible ordeal – she was allowed so much by the Swiss Govt but even though she sometimes had enough to buy food, after queuing and walking from shop to shop she would be told there was nothing left – so for her first year she was practically starving – the second year was a little better but during her two years in Paris she could not be helped by the Red Cross which did so much to succour those in the camps – Flora was one of the first to be sent to England after the liberation of Paris.”

Her arrest is incorrectly reported in the Evening Post, 5 November 1941, suggesting that Scales was arrested aboard a ship, “‘Captured at Sea: List of Prisoners now in Detention Camps.’ Advice has been received that the following prisoners of war who were captured by the enemy from merchant ships are in the detention camps shown against their names;- SCALES, Miss Helen Flora Victoria (artist), Front Stalag, 121 Vittel, Vosges. (Last known address): Care Bank of New Zealand, Wellington; or care Mrs. Lisle, Tahunanui.”

Flora Scales in conversation with Janet Paul, Rotorua, New Zealand, 27 March 1979, recalls the circumstances of her internment, "When the war began, because I was English, I had to sign in every day at the Commissariat de Police. One day my landlady said, 'You're wanted. There is a policeman in your room!' He took me (and I asked him to carry my heavy suitcase) to the Commissariat de Police. The Germans took our passports. We waited a long time. [We were] put into police vans at 1 o'clock and taken to Gare de l'Este. The President of the USA heard that the American women were taken prisoner and cabled someone in France and said, 'If you take these women to Germany I will lock up all your German women in America.' That must have helped to keep us in a French prison. [We] sat in [a] train. We were given a loaf of bread and a bowl of soup. Late in the afternoon the train moved to [the] east, to Besançon where we disembarked on a platform and marched (about 1,000 of us) to Frenchmen's training camp. It was in a most dreadful condition. It had been snowing and we were very cold [1940 was the coldest winter in France in living memory]. We lit fires in the rooms, we were free to walk about to collect firewood.”

Katherine Lack describes the conditions that confronted the 2,400 women after three days in the train: “Outside it was snowing – at about 8 o’clock on Sunday morning we arrived at Besançon…Presently we were marshalled out into a yard and directed to three big barrack buildings…indescribably dirty. All one side of the building was one big rubbish heap and inside old straw mattresses in all stages of decay on the floor, old shoes, helmets and soldiers [sic] discarded rags and dirt everywhere…None of us had had a proper meal or any sleep to speak of for three days and nights.” – Lack, Katherine, Frontstalag 142: The Internment Diary of an English Lady, Amberley Publishing, England, 2011, pp 40-41

Flora Scales in conversation with Janet Paul, Rotorua, New Zealand, 27 March 1979, continues: “After a week I got ill and was sent to a hospital in the country and was cured. While [I was] there the camp moved to Vittel [after six months in Besançon] where I joined them [making another train journey of two nights]. The camp was situated in lovely hotel grounds, a spa. [I] was there for 22 months and had a very happy time. A weekly parcel [arrived] from the Red Cross. I joined Mr Jones class. He was a Welsh clergyman who ran a bible class…After 22 months I was sent back to Paris. Quite free but very little to eat. Had money from Swiss legation for food and I spent it on paint and canvas…The British Embassy was opened and gave me a ride back to England in the aeroplane. That was about 1945.”

Frontstalag 142 was later renumbered 121 and further renumbered 194, according to different administration units of the German Army. The Germans published photos and press stories about Vittel to showcase it as representative of conditions at German camps. Fanny Twemlow refers to the Grand Hotel [Frontstalag 142] as "a 'whited sepulchre' – beautiful on the outside but rotten within." – Lack, Katherine, Frontstalag 142: The Internment Diary of an English Lady, Amberley Publishing, England, 2011, pg 116

It seems that Scales was on the same train from Paris to Besançon as Mrs Sofka Skipwith (nee Princess Sofka Dolgorouky) who recorded her experiences at Besançon and Vittel in Sofka: The Autobiography of a Princess (Hart-Davis, London, 1968) and in notes held at the Imperial War Museum, England (ref. 92/31/1, pg 2), which give another view of life in the Frontstalag: “We were placed in hotels in Vittel, a complex of buildings situated in a park and surrounding the mineral water springs that constituted the ‘Spa’. The whole was surrounded by barbed wire and patrolled by guards. Here the life of the camp became organised. Anyone who had anything to contribute volunteered so that by the end of the war one could become proficient in five languages, sit for G.E.C. exams, prepare for the Sorbonne, learn book binding, help with the library, attend constant lectures on various subjects, join the Dramatic Society, go to the keep fit classes, play tennis, table tennis, volley-ball, hockey, net ball, bridge or mah-jong, grow onion and lettuce in the flower beds or else, like the vast majority, sit knitting and gossiping, waiting for the time to pass and hoping only that nothing would disturb the peace by angering our jailers.”

Drawing of internment, Vittel, France, by Miss Fanny Twemlow
Inscription: LL Chambre 61, LR View from my bed
Photo: Lack, Katherine, Frontstalag 142: The Internment Diary of an English Lady, Amberley Publishing, England, 2011, pp 46-47

Death of Charles D’Oyley Snow, Mt Eden, Auckland, New Zealand, 12 October

Flora Scales’s Vittel camp identity card, Vittel, France. Details date interned 6.12.1940, also dated 9.10.1942, possibly the date of her release. Her identity card No. 37 EA41602.
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Flora Scales discovers loss of stored artwork which includes many, perhaps hundreds, of nude studies largely from the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art, Munich, Germany. Deposited prior to her internment at Wheatley & Co’s warehouse, a British-French owned shipping and transport firm, on 32 Rue Caumartin, Paris, France, Scales learned upon her release that the works of art were purportedly plundered from the warehouse. While the exact fate of Scales’s works of art remain unknown, remaining documentation from Wheatley’s & Co., shows that enemy property – Jewish and American owned – was seized at the direction of the occupation government.

Flora Scales spends the last two years of the war in Paris, France, where life is exceptionally difficult to maintain due to the bitterly cold winter, curfews and the scarcity of food. Not being a French citizen, and no longer having access to the Red Cross parcels she had as an internee, it is difficult to find sufficient food. She takes refuge in the art schools that remain open, sometimes working beside members of the Occupying Army, having found that heating is supplied if there are Germans attending the school.

Postcards sent by fellow internees, Vittel, France, to Flora Scales in Paris 1943 and 1944
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Birth of Robert Piers Westacott (second child of Patience and Harry Westacott), England, 15 June

Correspondence Flora Scales to her niece, Patience Westacott, who was at Camberley, England, with her mother, Marjorie, and two children, Diana and Piers. Scales is writing to Patience after the death at sea of her husband, Lt. Cdr Harry Westacott, Cap d' Antifer, France, 6 July
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Flora Scales, seated right, soon after her repatriation to England, c.1944. She is wearing the French dress, shoes and much darned stockings she had brought back in her small cardboard suitcase from France. Seated far left is Flora's sister, Marjorie. Seated second from left is her mother, Gertrude Scales, holding baby Robert Piers Westacott (second child of Patience and Harry Westacott).
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Marriage of Patience Westacott (née Reeves) and Garry Owen Evers-Swindell, Surrey, England, 5 September

Flora Scales is now responsible for the care of her mother, Gertrude Scales, in England. They share a flat in the village of Eversley near Camberley and make excursions together to Dorset [Port of Weymouth Bay [BC025], dated 08/09/1945], and to Preston Church [Preston Church [BC102]] with which Gertrude’s family is associated. Scales’s great grandfather, Octavius Piers, was Vicar of Preston, 1816-1848.

Death of Ernest Hastings Snow, Auckland, New Zealand, 17 April. His sketchbook is held at E. H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (acc. no RC2003/4)

Marjorie and Hugh St George Hamersley with Diana Piers and Robert Piers Westacott, the children of Patience Evers-Swindell, leave London for New Zealand on the RMS Rangitiki, 31 October

Death of Gertrude Maynard Scales (née Snow), England, 28 April

End of correspondence between sisters Flora Scales and Marjorie Hamersley

Flora Scales travels in the spring to her brother, Athol Scales, and his wife, Maude, Guernsey, United Kingdom, where she paints Untitled [Daffodils in Brown Jar] [BC027]

Colin McCahon correspondence with Ron O’Reilly mentions Flora Scales in reference to her connection to Toss Woollaston from when they met in 1934, 4 or 11 July, “Now about Flora Scales. I have never met her. Toss [knew] her about 1930-33 it must have been. She was a pupil of some Professor [Hans] Hoffman [sic for Hofmann] in Germany & had theories of space construction with particular reference to Cezanne.” (Simpson, Peter, Dear Colin, Dear Ron, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2024, pg 87)

Flora Scales transcribes notes on Leonardo da Vinci from a book belonging to Madame Kalachnikoff, “copied at Madame Kalachnikoff's, square Albin Cachot. Paris, 1949”. "square Albin Cachot. Paris" refers to Madame Kalachnikoff's address, 10 square Albin Cachot, 13ème, 75013, Paris, France, where Flora Scales resides 13 November 1965 - 29 May 1966.

Handwritten notes on Leonardo da Vinci from Untitled [Esquisse sketchbook] [BC118], “copied at Madame Kalachnikoff's, square Albin Cachot. Paris, 1949”.

After the death of her mother Flora Scales moves to Cornwall, England. “I went to a horrible room in Mousehole, all yellow rocks. Not a good place for painting. Back to St Ives. I lived in a little hotel on the sea front at Penzance. Had a sale and then went back to St Ives. I used to pass Barbara Hepworth's studio and could hear her hammering. She was always hammering. I didn't like to disturb her and never went in." – Flora Scales in conversation with Janet Paul, Rotorua, New Zealand, 27 March 1979

Scales is visited in Mousehole, Cornwall, England, by Boris Kalachnikoff and in St Ives, Cornwall, England, by her great niece Diana Zaharopoulos (nee Westacott). Zaharopoulos (then Mills), in a letter to B. de Lange, 12.11.1983, “I visited her there in a sparsely furnished house on the side of a hill. It was jolly cold and the wind was prevented from making life completely miserable only by thick red velvet curtains. Heavy as they were they still blew at an angle into the room...I was appalled by the lack of comfort with which she lived her life.”

Installation view, The Cornish Connection, The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatū, Nelson, New Zealand, 2017-2018
Foreground: Barbara Hepworth, Oval Form (Trezion), 1962-1963, bronze, ed. 7 (Collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington)
Back wall: First from right, Bryan Wynter’s Blue Landscape, 1953, oil on canvas, (Collection The Suter Art Gallery Te Aratoi o Whakatū, Nelson), second from right, Flora Scales, Boarding House, St Ives, Cornwall [1] [BC060] above Rita Angus’s Seamen’s Chapel, St Ives, 1959, watercolour, 283 x 351mm (Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū)

Photo: Courtesy Michael Moore-Jones, 2017

Marriage of Boris Kalachnikoff and Christiane Devèze

Boris and Christiane Kalachnikoff build a house at 102 boulevard Pasteur, Bry-sur-Marne, France. Bry-sur-Marne is a commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris, 12.6km from the centre of Paris.

Death of Isabella Maud Hamersley (née Snow), Aylesbury, England, 27 January

Flora Scales begins a routine of spending May - June or July - August at 102 boulevard Pasteur, Bry-sur-Marne, France, at the home of Christiane and Boris Kalachnikoff. Scales often looks after the pet animals while Christiane and Boris take their holidays. Scales paints in the garden at Bry-sur-Marne and the surrounding small towns and countryside.

Flora Scales’s British passport, issued 16 June 1958
Signed, H Flora V Scales
Profession, painter
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Flora Scales’s address is 95 Belsize Square, Belsize Park, London NW3, England

Flora Scales attends Heatherley School of Fine Art, October 1959 - July 1960, dates supplied by John Walton, Principal, to Patience Tennent, 1983. It is possible, however, that she attended occasionally in other years for particular purposes. For example, a note in the artist’s hand from a Portrait Class at “Heatherlys [sic]”, led by a Mr Bevis, Wednesday 25th January, 1961 [see Untitled [Loose Leaf Pages] [BC112]]. Scales later tells M. de Lange that she left a lot of her work at the Heatherley School but now considers these life drawings important and valuable as it all assisted her with her landscapes etc. Now she stresses that one should never throw anything away. M de Lange Notebooks recording conversations with Flora Scales, 1982-1983. Heatherley School of Fine Art, London, England, otherwise known as Warwick Square Academy, was founded in 1845, it is one of the oldest independent art colleges in London. It is also one of the few art schools in Britain that focuses on portraiture and figurative painting, sculpture and print-making. Heatherley was located at 33 Warwick Square, Pimlico, London, in the former house of the Scottish artist, Iain McNab, who founded the Grosvenor School of Modern Art on the premises. In 1940 the Grosvenor School merged with the Heatherley.

Death of Hugh St George Hamersley, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, 6 August

Toss Woollaston acknowledges his debt to Flora Scales in a lecture for the Friends of the Auckland City Art Gallery, New Zealand, 8 November. In this lecture he incorrectly refers to her death while in internment in France in the 1940s.

Flora Scales returns, probably briefly, to New Zealand

Flora Scales is visited by her great niece Diana Zaharopoulos (nee Westacott), Paris, France

Ron O’Reilly correspondence with Colin McCahon discusses Flora Scales and her influence on Toss Woollaston’s practice as a result of their meeting in 1934, 19 March, “I am also trying to find out from Toss where his notebooks are in which he wrote down [Flora] Scales' version of Hofmann…You are absolutely right in believing that without Scales (whom, Toss has told me, he regarded simply as a clear window through which he was confident he was seeing Hofmann undistorted) the Woollaston we know would simply not exist.” (Simpson, Peter, Dear Colin, Dear Ron, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2024, pg 214)

Flora Scales’s address is 10 square Albin Cachot, 13ème, 75013, Paris, France, 13 November 1965 - 29 May 1966

Flora Scales’s British passport, issued 11 July 1968
Signed, H. Flora V. Scales
Profession, HOUSEHOLD-DOMESTIC
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Postcard from Boris Kalachnikoff in Saint Tropez, France, sent to Flora Scales at Bry-sur-Marne, 9.07.1970. Features a photograph of La Ponche which is seen in Scales's painting St Maxime [BC018]

Above and below: Blue aerogramme letter from Flora Scales to the Dunedin Public Art Gallery dated 30 November. LL corner of the letter reads, “dd James Mack.”, pencil. James Mack was the Assistant Director 1968-1971.
Photo: Courtesy Hocken Collections - Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago Library, ref. Flora Scales Artist File

The Secretary,
The Dunedin Public Art Gallery,
P.O. Box 366, Dunedin,
New Zealand. 

Miss F Scales
203 Victoria Park Road,
London, E.9.
England

The Dunedin Public Art Gallery
The Secretary.

Dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter of July, and please excuse me for not having replied sooner to it. In reference to my paintings, correspondence and photographs which you mention, there are not any allocated to the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Thank you for writing.
yours faithfully,
Miss H.F.V. Scales
203. Victoria Park Road,
London, E.9. 
30th November 1970

dd James Mack.

Above and below: Details of blue aerogramme letter from Flora Scales to the Dunedin Public Art Gallery dated 30 November
Photo: Courtesy Hocken Collections - Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago Library, ref. Flora Scales Artist File

Marjorie Hamersley donates three of Flora Scales’s paintings to the newly opened Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, New Zealand [Untitled [The White Horse] [BC003], Mediterranean Village [BC019], Port of Weymouth Bay [BC025]]

Flora Scales’s address is 159 York Place, Dunedin, New Zealand, July 1972 - late 1973. While here she meets artists Rodney Kennedy, Patricia France, Anne and Colin McCahon.

Death of Gertrude Maud Marjorie Hamersley (née Scales, formerly Reeves), Selwyn Village, Pt Chevalier, Auckland, New Zealand, 8 June

Death of Helen Constance Hamersley, England

Private exhibition and sale of 24 paintings by Flora Scales at the home of Mrs Joan Williams, Havelock North, New Zealand, 26 April and 1 May. Works selected from those held by the artist. Opening celebration attended by Flora and niece Patience Tennent.

Patricia France and Rodney Kennedy visit Flora Scales in Dunedin, New Zealand

Divorce of Ellen Patience Evers-Swindell and Garry Owen Evers-Swindell, Decree Absolute, 5 August

Ron O’Reilly correspondence with Colin McCahon discusses Flora Scales and her influence on Toss Woollaston’s practice as a result of their meeting in 1934, 21 September, “The argument is in effect Toss’s own argument from The Far Away Hills, playing down the importance of [Flora] Scales. Luit [Bieringa]’s study of this he ignores entirely and this must be assumed to be deliberate; reading between the lines he is peeved at Luit…In view of my name being mentioned again in connexion with Scales, it is about time I made good the omission from my 1948 article of the source of my reference to her: you…A point I want to make is that what an artist says about how he sees something that has influence him is only one piece of evidence, and by no means a definitive one for the historian.”, (Simpson, Peter, Dear Colin, Dear Ron, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2024, pg 396-397)

Colin McCahon correspondence with Ron O’Reilly marks the beginning of McCahon’s search for Flora Scales, 27 September, “Did I tell you Flora Scales lives on our end of Dominion Rd[?] Barry Lett foxed her out…Scales I have no address –“ (Simpson, Peter, Dear Colin, Dear Ron, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2024, pg 398)

Colin McCahon correspondence with Ron O’Reilly discusses the early stages of McCahon curating the solo exhibition Helen F. V. Scales at the Auckland City Art Gallery, 21 October, “(Scales lives at our end of Dominion Road. Is painting & could be visited.)” (Simpson, Peter, Dear Colin, Dear Ron, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2024, pg 401)

Continues, 13 November, “I'm being handed the Flora Scales exhibition by the Art Gallery. I've just come home from a most interesting morning with Ernest Smith & Anne Kirker & Miss Scales. Smith has put $300 on all the work. Flora has come up with a great heap of drawings from the Hoffman [sic for Hofmann] period. It's all taking shape. I will have to produce a catalogue & will need help from you & Luit & Toss. The whole show will be small & the catalogue small also. But I want it to be accurate – it's about time – …To let you know the latest Scales. I want to buy for Hocken too. Do I buy for you at $300?” (Simpson, Peter, Dear Colin, Dear Ron, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2024, pg 401). On McCahon’s suggestion O’Reilly purchases House and Plum Trees [BC070].

Toss Woollaston correspondence with Colin McCahon, headed “RD3 Motueka”, 19 November, “I learnt much more than I could learn at once. It seeped in gradually for years after – no doubt changed a little by my assimilation…I do remember being told one should sit above the level of a landscape, on a hillside: that lines diverging outward, correspond to our sense of space increasing as you get further away whereas converging lines pinch space unpleasantly…” (E.H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand, ref. file SCALES, H.F.V. (Flora) CORRESPONDENCE (Private) 4, pp 2, 4). This letter from Woollaston to McCahon was in reply to McCahon’s request for Woollaston's recollection of Flora Scales’s guiding remarks about painting when they met in 1934. McCahon was preparing to curate the 1975-76 exhibition Helen F.V. Scales at the Auckland City Art Gallery.

Colin McCahon correspondence with Ron O’Reilly regarding the solo exhibition McCahon is curating at the Auckland City Art Gallery, Helen F. V. Scales, undated [marked received 30 November], “Am now just surfacing again & on about Chère Flora. I hear from Peter McLeavey that the $300 is stupid. [footnote, “…McLeavey presumably thought $300 too low a price”] We may up the price. The whole collection is at the moment just sitting – but the news has spread all around & everybody knows. Prices are rising. It's all bloody awful & really a big untruth. I have asked Brenda Gamble to do the very necessary essay for the catalogue. She is so kind & nice – and not so involved as I might be. I will do the paintings & all the small things, Brenda the story…Later. Suddenly Flora was standing in our room and off to Dunedin. We had a good afternoon at the Art Gallery & she handed over all the paintings [,] one left here for me. Brenda has heaps of notes. As I expected she & Flora got on wonderfully. There is no Dunedin address. This was one of the most unexpected afternoons I've met with.” (Simpson, Peter, Dear Colin, Dear Ron, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2024, pg 401-402)

Colin McCahon correspondence with Ron O’Reilly, undated [marked received 30 November], “I have copied Hoffman [sic] material & return the original.” (Simpson Peter, Dear Colin, Dear Ron, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2024, pg 402). This statement is revealing as it was assumed that Woollaston copied notes belonging to Flora Scales from her time at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art in Munich and verbally relayed ideas from them to McCahon. It is unclear who McCahon borrowed the notes from and returned them to, Flora Scales or Toss Woollaston.

Colin McCahon correspondence with Ron O’Reilly regarding the solo exhibition McCahon is curating at the Auckland City Art Gallery, Helen F. V. Scales, 11 December, “I’m not doing a letter. I’m making notes. 1) Flora [Scales] told me she had received your $300 and had sent some of it back to you. I know nothing more about this lot. 2) Brenda [Gamble] & Flora got on so well & so much happened Brenda has just heaps of information we could never get. Do you think, as I do, that you should write an essay on Scales & Woollaston[?] Very brief. I don't want to stir up too much too soon.” (Simpson Peter, Dear Colin, Dear Ron, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2024, pg 402)

Flora Scales with her great great niece and nephew, Sophie and Jacob, and their mother, New Zealand, 1970s
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Ron O’Reilly correspondence with Colin McCahon discusses Flora Scales and her influence on Toss Woollaston’s practice as a result of their meeting in 1934, 15 March, “I have framed Flora [Scales’s] little painting [House and Plum Trees [BC070]], which I continue to enjoy, and belatedly written in answer to her January letter, the text of which I gave you. I have now told her about the different things Toss has said she taught him, and about how he saw the paintings she was then doing, all complimentary, and asked her if these were the things she was trying to teach him. I hope by her answer to this question to test, what he clearly believes, that she was a good teacher. I have also asked her, following his wondering that influences, other than those of the Hofmann School, there have since been on her work, if she would mind telling me what study she has done over the years, either formal or informal e.g. by examining a particular artist’s work in the Galleries and trying out what she has discovered. And I’ve sent Toss a print of a photo of my [Scales] painting…I must say however that generally Toss has been most cooperative of late, and I’m glad you have had such an ample statement on the Scales incident from him.” (Simpson, Peter, Dear Colin, Dear Ron, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2024, pg 404)

Marriage of Ellen Patience Evers-Swindell (née Reeves, formerly Westacott) and Patrick Stanley Tennent, St Mark’s Church, Havelock North, New Zealand, 19 April. Ellen and Patrick went on to have three children, Hornby, Philip and Thomas.

Flora Scales moves from Dunedin to 38 Brentwood Avenue, Mt Eden, Auckland, New Zealand, where she lives until late 1976

Flora Scales’s painting Mediterranean Village [BC019] included in New Zealand Painting, 1920 – 1940: Adaptation and Nationalism, Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council Exhibition, which tours New Zealand, 1975 - 1977, 11 June

Flora Scales correspondence with Brenda Gamble, 28 July, “It was most kind of you to ask me to Miss Smith's lecture, though I am afraid I could not have come as I want to keep the time for painting - yet do not wish to appear ungrateful to you. I hope she had a large audience.” Miss Smith is possibly May Smith and Gamble extended the invitation perhaps realising they knew each other. Almost 50 years later Scales and Smith are exhibiting together in Modern Women: Flight of Time, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand.

Ron O’Reilly correspondence with Colin McCahon regarding Japanese artist Tomioka Tessai (1837-1924) whose work McCahon had seen in San Francisco, U.S.A. in 1958, 4 August, “The difference between Tessai and Flora is that for decades she was simply a legend but almost no one except Toss has seen her work, whereas those of us who happened on Tessai did so through your illustrated catalogue.” (Simpson, Peter, Dear Colin, Dear Ron, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2024, pg 417)

Flora Scales corresponds with curator Anne Kirker, Auckland, New Zealand. Four of her paintings are included in New Zealand’s Women Painters exhibition, to mark the International Year of Women, curated by Kirker, Auckland City Art Gallery, New Zealand, 31 October - 23 November.

Flora Scales’s solo exhibition, Helen F. V. Scales, curated by Colin McCahon, at Auckland City Art Gallery, New Zealand, 16 December 1975 - 11 January 1976. 43 paintings are exhibited and for sale.

Flora Scales exhibits
*New Zealand Painting, 1920–1940: Adaptation and Nationalism, Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council Exhibition, touring exhibition, 11 June
*New Zealand’s Women Painters, Auckland City Art Gallery, 31 October
*Helen F. V. Scales, Auckland City Art Gallery, 16 December

Flora Scales at Brenda Gamble’s house for lunch with a work by Pat Hanly behind her, 11 November. Brenda Gamble was part of the curating team assembled by Colin McCahon for the Auckland City Art Gallery exhibition Helen F. V. Scales, 1975-1976.
Photo: Courtesy John S. Daley (1946-2021), E. H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand

Artwork pricing for exhibition Helen F. V. Scales at Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand, July
Photo: Courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library, National of New Zealand, Wellington, MS-Papers-12387-091, Peter McLeavey Gallery: Records, Exhibition file 83. Helen FV Scales

Letter from Peter McLeavey to John Maynard, Auckland City Art Gallery, 16 July 1976
Photo: Courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library, National of New Zealand, Wellington, MS-Papers-12387-091, Peter McLeavey Gallery: Records, Exhibition file 83. Helen FV Scales

Invitation from Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand, for the exhibition, Helen F.V. Scales, 5 July – 16 July
Photo: Courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library, National of New Zealand, Wellington, MS-Papers-12387-091, Peter McLeavey Gallery: Records, Exhibition file 83. Helen FV Scales

Letter from Peter McLeavey to Flora Scales at the conclusion of the exhibition, Helen F.V. Scales, which began at Auckland City Art Gallery in 1975
Photo: Courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library, National of New Zealand, Wellington, MS-Papers-12387-091, Peter McLeavey Gallery: Records, Exhibition file 83. Helen FV Scales

16^th of July 1976

Helen F.V. Scales
Flat 1
38 Brentwood Avenue
Mount Eden
AUCKLAND

Dear Miss Scales,

Thank you for the fine exhibition.

I have written to the Auckland City Art Gallery advising them of the details of the works I’ve sold here. I expect to be remitting proceeds to you over the next three weeks.

I forward a review that appeared in a weekly paper THE WEEK together with the advertisement I placed to promote the show.

I expect to be in Auckland next weekend. I would like to visit you if that was convenient. Perhaps you could write to me or just let Colin know if you were prepared to receive me.

I would be very interested to receive works from you as I am confident that I can interest further of my clientele in your paintings. Perhaps we could chat about that when I visit Auckland. Or you could advise Colin.

Warmest Regards

Return letter from Flora Scales to Peter McLeavey
Photo: Courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library, National of New Zealand, Wellington, MS-Papers-12387-091, Peter McLeavey Gallery: Records, Exhibition file 83. Helen FV Scales

[undated – presumed July 1976]

38 Brentwood Avenue
Mount Eden
Flat 1
Auckland

Dear Mr McLeavey,

Thank you for your letter which reached me this morning, thank you also for selling some of my paintings.

I think I gather from your letter you would like to keep some of my paintings but I would prefer to have them all returned.

I shall be pleased to see you if you are in Auckland at the weekend, at that time.

Yours faithfully
Helen F.V. Scales

Flora Scales, centre, with Patience and Pat Tennent, taken on Mt Eden Maungawhau, Auckland, New Zealand, December 1976
Inscription verso: “Pat and me with Aunt Lass outside a restaurant in Auckland, the day we saw her off to France and England, 1976"
Photo: Courtesy Patience Tennent

Flora Scales returns to New Zealand on SS Shota Rustaveli, via Athens, after around four months in France. In Athens she meets her niece, Diana Zaharopoulos (nee Westacott, later Mills). Zaharopoulos collects her and takes her home to her flat in Athens for the night. Correspondence Diana Mills to B. de Lange, 02.11.1983, “Although Aunt Lass [Flora] seemed a little older, she still seemed the old Aunt Lass, upright and full of courage.” This was to be the last journey Scales made between Europe and New Zealand.

Flora Scales arrives in Auckland and returns to live at 38 Brentwood Avenue, Mt Eden, 23 May. She stays for around 18 months.

Flora Scales’s painting Orchard with Plum Trees [4] [BC077] is selected to illustrate the September page of the 1977 Modern New Zealand Painting Calendar, published by Alister Taylor

Flora Scales paints still life's and a series based on the Norfolk Island Pine trees she could see from her window at 38 Brentwood Avenue, Mt Eden, Auckland, New Zealand [Three Trees Brentwood Avenue [BC088]]. She also paints the lemon tree that grew in the back garden [Untitled [Lemon Tree] [BC086]].

Flora Scales suffers a broken collar bone and is taken to Rotorua, New Zealand by her nephew, Piers Westacott, who lives and works there

Flora Scales takes up residence at the Rotorua Masonic Village, New Zealand, 26 October

Boris Kalachnikoff in his garden at Bry-sur-Marne, France, with Tzigane, his German Shepherd, 1979. Tzigane was painted by Flora Scales in 1962 [Bry-sur-Marne [BC040].
Photo: Courtesy de Lange Collection

Letter from Patience Tennent to The Curator, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Wellington, 26 November 1978, regarding Flora Scales’s gift to the Library
Photos: Courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library, National of New Zealand, Wellington

Ref. Will answer last part on 8 Dec
3/1/1

[Stamped: Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington
Art/Ref 29 November 1978]

November 26^th 1978

To the Curator
Turnbull Library
Wellington

Dear Sir,

My aunt – Miss Flora Scales – is now in the Masonic Village, Rotorua, having given up her flat in Auckland.

She broke her collarbone and feels the effort and responsibility of coping with her paintings, papers and the general scramble of everyday life in the city too much.

Therefore she asked me to take charge of her remaining pictures and said that you had written to ask her for a painting at some time.

My husband and I plan to go to Wellington…[lines missing]…convenient for us to come and see you on that day. Would 11am be suitable. There are some very interesting papers with notes given by some of her well known instructors in Europe which she feels should be interesting to students of the future, which we will also bring.

I would like any information you might have on my great grandfather Charles Hastings Snow who came to NZ on the ‘Lord Burleigh’ in 1860 and was in the audit dept of the Civil Service, moving with the seat of Government to Wellington in 1866.

Yours sincerely

Patience Tennent

Flora Scales arranges for 17 oil paintings and a selection of drawings and notebooks to be donated to the Alexander Turnbull Library, National of New Zealand, Wellington. Process is managed by Janet Paul. The Alexander Turnbull Library Donation Book, pg 241, records the donation: "Flora Scales, Masonic Village, Te Ngae Road, Owhata, Rotorua, 3 notebooks, 1 charcoal drawing of St. Tropez, 16 oil paintings on canvas, 28.3.79". 16 oil painting are recorded but 17 are donated, the last possibly being at a later date but is unrecorded.

Flora Scales in conversation with Janet Paul, Rotorua, New Zealand, said, "All my paintings I have done since I've been 45 [1932]", 27 March

Flora Scales's income is $2,000 per annum - Flora Scales in conversation with Janet Paul, Rotorua, New Zealand, 27 March

Colin McCahon correspondence with Ron O’Reilly, 7 August, “Pat France has been up from Dunedin & has visited Flora Scales in a Masonic Old Peoples Home in Rotorua. Cataracts in both eyes to be operated on around Christmas. She is still painting. Pat saw 3 paintings in progress.” (Simpson, Peter, Dear Colin, Dear Ron, Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2024, pg 454)

Letter from J. E. Traue, Chief Librarian, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Wellington, to Flora Scales, 19 March 1979
Photo: Courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library, National of New Zealand, Wellington

19 March 1979

Miss H. F Scales,
Masonic Village,
Te Ngai Road,
ROTORUA.

Dear Miss Scales,

Thank you for your generous gift.

This Library is enriched by your donation of paintings and of the historically important notebooks. They will be valued and cared for.

Because the Turnbull Library is basically a research Library and has not yet good space for public display of works, we will have your work put on stretchers and framed so that it can be lent for exhibitions to the National Art Gallery, the Dowse Gallery in Lower Hutt; and to the Manawatu Art Gallery where an example of your work will be, in addition, valued for its influence on their major area of collection, the paintings of Toss Woollaston.

We are also very glad to have the information on your life which Mrs Paul was able to record. She asked me to add her thanks and one query. Who was the subject of the portrait of a seated woman?

Yours sincerely,

J. E. Traue
Chief Librarian.

Letter from Janet Paul, Art Librarian, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Wellington, to Flora Scales, 21 March 1979
Photo: Courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library, National of New Zealand, Wellington

21 March 1979.

Miss Flora Scales, c/o Masonic Village
Te Ngae Rd
Owhata, Rororua

Dear Miss Scales,

I was very interested to see the papers you lent to the Turnbull Library and would like to come and see you if that would be convenient. I will be in Rotorua on Monday, 26 March for a few hours. May I call about 11 a.m.

I hope you are well and look forward to meeting you.

Yours sincerely,

Janet Paul
Art Librarian.

Letter from Flora Scales to Janet Paul, Librarian, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Wellington, 11 June 1979, regarding arrangements to do with her gift of paintings and papers to the Library
Photo: Courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library, National of New Zealand, Wellington

[Stamped: Alexander Turnbull Library
12 June 1979
Art: JH [possibly JET, J.E. Traue, Chief Librarian]]

Masonic Village
Rotorua
11^th June 1979

Dear Mrs Paul,

Please excuse me for not having written to you sooner but little things have hindered me from doing so: it is a grand plan to have my paintings photographed before they are filed!  they have all come out well and clear, and the surface will be good wearing: the dog [Bry-sur-Marne [BC040]] has come out beautifully!

I hope you are keeping well during this cold frosty weather though temperatures by the sea are not so low as inland ones especially if there is no wind.

Thank you again for the delightful photos.

Yours very sincerely,

Helen F. V Scales

Alexander Turnbull Library Donation Book, pg 241
Photos: Courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library, National of New Zealand, Wellington

Flora Scales
Masonic Village
Te Ngae Road
Owhata
Rotorua

3 notebooks, 1 charcoal drawing of St. Tropez, 16 oil paintings on canvas

28.3.79

Letter from Moira M. Long, Art Librarian, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Wellington, to Flora Scales, 10 July 1980
Photo: Courtesy Alexander Turnbull Library, National of New Zealand, Wellington

10 July 1980

Miss H. F. V. Scales,
Masonic Village,
Te Ngae,
Owata,
ROTORUA.

Dear Miss Scales,

As Janet Paul has now retired, I am writing to advise you that we have now stretched and framed the paintings you donated to the Turnbull Library last year. We hope to be able to arrange to lend them for exhibition to a suitable gallery. This is an opportune time as a great deal of interest is currently being shown in the work of New Zealand women artists.

Mrs Paul has asked me to convey to you her warmest wishes. We should like to thank you for your most generous gift to the Library. Together the paintings and papers make a valuable contribution to the documentation of New Zealand art.

Yours sincerely,

Moira M. Long
Art Librarian.

Death of Garry Owen Evers-Swindell, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 15 October

Flora Scales paints series of portraits such as Untitled [Portrait of a Head with Shaded Eyes] [BC092] and Untitled [Portrait Head with Blue at Lower Left] [BC093] at the Rotorua Masonic Village, New Zealand, 1981-1983

Photograph of a drawing by Boris Kalachnikoff, Young Girl, undated, kept in Flora Scales’s personal papers, Rotorua Masonic Village, New Zealand, 1980s
Inscription: “Pour ma Marraine Flora que je n’oublerai jamais Boris Kalachnikoff" [For my godmother, who I will never forget]
Photo: Courtesy de Lange Collection

Marjorie de Lange begins recording conversations and observations of her visits to Flora Scales at the Rotorua Masonic Village, New Zealand, 1982-1983. These recordings form the M de Lange Notebooks.

Flora Scales, aged 95, painting Theo [Portrait of a Male Head] [BC096] with sitter Theo de Lange at the Rotorua Masonic Village, New Zealand, March 1982

Marjorie de Lange notebooks and letters recording conversations and observations from her visits to Flora Scales, Rotorua Masonic Village, 1982-1983
Photo: Courtesy de Lange Collection

Marjorie de Lange at Lake Rotoiti, New Zealand, 2008
Photo: Courtesy A. de Lange 

Marjorie de Lange in her sitting room, Lake Rotoiti, New Zealand, 2010 
Photo: Courtesy A. de Lange

Flora Scales talking to Angus de Lange, Lake Rotoiti, New Zealand, 1982
Photo: Courtesy de Lange Collection

Flora Scales at Theo and Marjorie de Lange's house, Lake Rotoiti, New Zealand, 1982. Scales is seated with her skirt neatly folded over her lap to protect its shape, she is wearing a hat bought in France. Marjorie de Lange can be seen in the background, behind the counter.
Photo: Courtesy de Lange Collection

Gretchen Albrecht and Flora Scales, Rotorua Masonic Village, New Zealand, February 1984
Photo: Courtesy Linda Gill

Boris Kalachnikoff, who survived Flora Scales, is named as sole beneficiary of her Estate pursuant to her Last Will and Testament dated 24 January 1975

Last Will and Testament of Helen Flora Victoria Scales dated 24 January 1975

Flora Scales in included in the exhibition Women in New Zealand Society 1884-1958, Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, New Zealand, 17 May - 21 July. This exhibition, co-sponsored by Unilever New Zealand Ltd., was part of the centenary of Sunlight Soap, and celebrated the end of the International Decade of Women, 1976-1985. Each woman included represented one year. Flora Scales represented the year 1932. The exhibition included brief biographical notes and a portrait photograph. No art works were physically displayed.

Flora Scales's paint box, paintbrushes, paints and palette [BC146], Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand, gifted by Patience Tennent, 1986, Registration Number CA000215/001/0002, https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/252902
Photo: Courtesy Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand

Flora Scales’s easel [BC147], Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand, gifted by Mrs. Patience Tennent, 1986, Registration Number CA000215/001/0001, https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/252901
Photo: Installation view, The Women of Pumpkin Cottage, Whirinaki Whare Taonga, Upper Hutt, New Zealand, 2023. Courtesy Whirinaki Whare Taonga.

Flora Scales's artist's smock [BC148], Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand, gifted by Patience Tennent, 1986, Registration Number GH018017, https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/959786
Photo: Courtesy Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand

‘Incorrect reporting of the death of Flora Scales and its unfortunate consequences’, A Grievous Error, Unpublished Autobiographical Notes, Sir M. T. Woollaston, Chapter 10, pp 60-130, Museum of New Zealand Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand (reg. no. CA000062/001/0002). Jennifer Twist, librarian, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, correspondence with B. de Lange, 25 June 2015, says these notes are thought to be one of Woollaston’s attempts to rewrite Sage Tea in which he acknowledges his mistaken report of Scales’s death in his 1960 lecture to Friends of the Auckland City Art Gallery.

An exhibition of Flora Scales's paintings to be curated by Bill Milbank, Director, The Sarjeant Gallery, Whanganui, New Zealand, is forestalled due to lack of allocated funds

Toss Woollaston in conversation with Gregory O’Brien, Upper Moutere, New Zealand, September 1994:
GO’B:  How did Flora Scales influence what you were doing?
TW: Profoundly and instantly and constructively. She helped me paint pictures stimulated by what I saw in nature instead of trying to render an imitation. Nature was like the ingredients of a cook – you make it into something different.
– Talking Toss Woollaston, Gregory O’Brien: Toss Woollaston in conversation with Gregory O’Brien, https://nzbooks.org.nz/2001/comment/talking-toss-woollaston-gregory-obrien/

Death of Neil Robertson Ostenfeld, Wellington, New Zealand, 8 February

Death of Patrick Stanley Tennent, New Zealand, 2 May

Death of Ellen Patience Tennent (née Reeves, formerly Westacott, formerly Evers-Swindell), Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, 19 May

Death of Boris Kalachnikoff, Villejuif, Val de Marne, 13km from Bry-sur-Marne, France, 22 March

Flora Scales exhibits in Pic 'n' Mix, The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, New Zealand, 29 June

Death of Diana Mills (née Westacott, formerly Zaharopoulos), Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, 4 May

Exhibition advertisement, BioHorizon Space, Bry-sur-Marne, France, 2019

About Boris and Christiane Kalachnikoff, courtesy BioHorizon Space, Bry-sur-Marne, France, 2019

Flora Scales exhibits Mīharo Wonder: 100 Years of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Turnbull Room, Wellington, 26 February

Flora Scales exhibits The Back of the Painting, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand, 8 April

Launch of florascales.com, an online catalogue and website dedicated to Flora Scales. The Flora Scales Catalogue is an ongoing project and we would like to encourage anyone who is in possession of, or knows of, previously unidentified paintings accredited to Scales, or supposed to be made by Scales, to contact us.

The search for Flora Scales's stolen artwork from Paris, France, in the early 1940s continues with research by Dr Nelson Wattie, Wellington, New Zealand, in collaboration with David Zivie, Ministère de la Culture, Secrétariat général, Chef de la Mission de recherche et de restitution des biens culturels spoliés entre 1933 et 1945, Paris, France

Drawing by Christina McGregor of Flora Scales used in the exhibition The Women of Pumpkin Cottage, Whirinaki Whare Taonga, Upper Hutt, New Zealand, 2023.
Photo: Courtesy the artist and Whirinaki Whare Taonga.