Timeline

The following Timeline provides information about key moments in the life and career of Flora Scales and aims to augment the Biography published on this website. The Timeline also provides a social and political context for the events of Scales’s life.

"She often emphasises the aloneness and dedication of being an artist. She talks a lot about how hard her work at painting has been – that she has read little – compares herself to other artists, like ballet dancers, whose whole lives are dedicated to towards one goal – trying to improve endlessly. She said: “Artists are obliged to give up opportunities in order to continue their painting.”
– The Notebooks of M de Lange recording conversations with Flora Scales, 1982-1983

Life

1824

Political & Social

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

1825

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

1847

Birth of Katherine (Kate) Wilson Sheppard (nee Malcolm), Liverpool, England,10 March

1848

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

1850

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

1857

Birth of Stanhope Alexander Forbes, Dublin, Ireland, 18 November

1858

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

1859

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

Birth of James Nairn, England, 18 November

1860

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.

1861

Birth of Dorothy Kate Richmond, Auckland, New Zealand

1863

Birth of Charles D’Oyly Snow, New Zealand (Gertrude Snow’s brother)

London Underground begins operation, England, 10 January

1866

Birth of Daines Barrington Snow, New Zealand (Gertrude Snow’s brother)

Birth of Roger Eliot Fry, London, England, 14 December

1869

Birth of Frances Mary Hodgkins, Dunedin, New Zealand, 28 April

Suez Canal, Egypt, opens, 17 November

1874

First Impressionist Exhibition, 35 boulevard des Capucins, Paris, France. Includes work by Claude Monet, Camille Pissaro, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cѐzanne and Berthe Morisot.

Opening of railway line between Lower Hutt and Wellington, New Zealand

1876

Marriage of Isabella Maud Snow and Alfred St George Hamersley, Wellington, New Zealand

Patent issued on Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone, 7 March

1877

Birth of Sydney Lough Thompson, New Zealand, 24 January

Declaration of Queen Victoria as Empress of India, May

Education Act establishes free, compulsory and secular education in New Zealand for all Pākehā children

1878

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

1879

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

1880

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

Birth of Hans Hofmann, Bavaria, Germany, 21 March

1881

Union of Women Painters and Sculptors founded, Paris, France

1883

Birth of Margaret Mary Butler, Greymouth, New Zealand, 30 April

1884

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

1885

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

Birth of Hermina (Mina) Arndt, near Arrowtown, New Zealand, 18 April

Birth of Maria (Miz) Wolfegg, Germany, 27 June

1886

Birth of John Weeks, Devon, England, 8 June

Birth of Roger Bissiѐre, France, 22 September

1887

Birth of Helen Flora Victoria Scales, Wellington, New Zealand, 24 May

Celebration of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, 20 June

1888

Birth of Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp, Wellington, New Zealand, 14 October

Birth of Gwendoline (Gwen) Jessie Knight, Wellington, New Zealand

Birth of Edmund Daniel Kinzinger, Pforzheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, 31 December

1889

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

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

1890

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

Maurice Denis writes: “Remember that a picture – before being a warhorse, a nude woman or some sort of anecdote – is essentially a surface covered with colours arranged in a certain order.” – opening passage of ‘Definition of Neo-Traditionalism’, Art et Critique, 23 August 1890.

1891

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

Birth of Ella Lilian Rowe, Melbourne, Australia

1892

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

John Weeks to New Zealand

Birth of Vaclav Vytlacil, New York, USA

Birth of Edwin Murray Fuller, Wellington, New Zealand

1893

Enfranchisement of Women New Zealand

1896

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

Kate Sheppard becomes President of the National Council of Women, New Zealand

1897

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

1899

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

First exhibition of Berlin Secession, 19 May

1900

Scales attends Mary Swainson’s Fitzherbert Terrace School, Thorndon, Wellington, New Zealand, for two years

Death of Charles Hastings Stuart Snow, Lower Hutt, New Zealand, 13 August

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

Katherine Mansfield attends Mary Swainson’s Fitzherbert Terrace School, Thorndon, Wellington, New Zealand until the end of 1902

Birth of Helen Marie Stewart, Wellington, New Zealand, 27 March

1901

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. 

Death of Queen Victoria, England

1902

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. 

1903

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

Beauchamp family return to England on SS Niwaru, a six week journey via Cape Horn and Las Palmas, 29 January. Harold Beauchamp books the entire passenger accommodation for his family.

The Beauchamp family, in port at Las Palmas, Canary Islands, on voyage from Wellington, New Zealand, to London, England, via Cape Horn, 1903
BACK ROW – Kathleen Beauchamp [Katherine Mansfield], Sir Harold Beauchamp, two officers of SS Niwaru, Vera Beauchamp
SECOND ROW – Charlotte Beauchamp, Annie Beauchamp, Captain SS Niwaru, Belle Dyer [aunt]
FRONT ROW – Leslie Beauchamp, Jeanne Beauchamp

Photo: Courtesy http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm//scholarly/ManLife-fig-ManLife_P012a.html

Birth of Ernst Anton Plischke, Austria, 26 June

Deaths of Paul Gauguin, Camille Pissarro and James McNeil Whistler

Emmeline Pankhurst and daughter Christabel help found Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), London, England

1904

Flora Scales confirmed Church of England, Christchurch, New Zealand

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. 

Death of James Nairn, Wellington, New Zealand, 2 February

Claude Monet exhibits 37 views of London, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, France

Hans Hofmann leaves Munich, Germany, for Paris, France, where he stays until 1914. He moves in artistic circles that include Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Robert Delaunay, who, along with other German writers, artists and intellectuals, frequent the Café du Dôme, Montparnasse.

Syndicate of Women Painters and Sculptors founded, Paris, France

1905

First exhibition of Die Brücke (The Bridge) in Dresden marks the beginning of modern art in Germany, September - October. Includes work by Ernst Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.

Exhibition of 315 Impressionist paintings, Grafton Galleries, London, England

Salon d’Automne, Paris, France. Includes paintings by Fauve artists.

1906

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

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. 

Birth of May Anne Smith, Simla, India, 18 June

Paintings from the Salon d’Automne, Paris, France, shown at Lafayette Gallery, London, England

Death of Paul Cézanne

Sergei Diaghilev organises Exhibition of Russian Art, Paris, France

New Zealand International Exhibition, Christchurch, New Zealand, 1 November - 15 April 1907

1907

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.

Excerpt from Sojourning Shopping & Studying in Paris: A Handbook Particularly for Women by Elizabeth Otis Williams, referencing Wheatley’s & Co., Paris, France, “Packing, Storing, and Despatching Goods. – Frequently visitors to Paris want to have goods stored or packed and sent away. This can be well done at Wheatley's, 32, rue Caumartin (5-13). They will provide strong boxes of the required size, and when packed, will either store them until needed, or despatch them at reasonable charges. They have agents in England and America. It is very comfortable to have them ship extra trunks directly to their destination in care of one of their agents. The owner has only to make her declaration to the agent, and he attends to getting them through the custom house, saving her endless trouble and annoyance.” – Williams, Elizabeth Otis, Sojourning Shopping & Studying in Paris: A Handbook Particularly for Women, A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, USA, 4 May 1907, pg 44, https://archive.org/stream/soiourningshoppi005586mbp/soiourningshoppi005586mbp_djvu.txt

Sojourning Shopping & Studying in Paris: A Handbook Particularly for Women by Elizabeth Otis Williams (A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, USA, 4 May 1907) pp iii (above) and 44 (below)
Photos: Courtesy https://archive.org/stream/soiourningshoppi005586mbp/soiourningshoppi005586mbp_djvu.txt

Walter Sickert, Spencer Gore and Harold Gilman found the Fitzroy Street Group, London, England

Retrospective exhibition of 56 paintings by Paul Cézanne, Salon d'Automne, Paris, France. Includes Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses) (1894-1905, The National Gallery, London, England)

Exhibition of watercolours by Paul Cézanne, Bernheim Jeune, Paris, France, 17-29 June. Includes Terrace of the Garden at Les Lauves (1902-06). Both exhibitions have a profound effect on Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in their work towards Cubism. It is most likely, given Hans Hofmann's presence in the artistic and intellectual world of Montparnasse, Paris, France, that he visited these exhibitions.

Pablo Picasso paints Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon

New Zealand declared a Dominion, 26 September

1908

G. H. Scales begins a charter of steam ships to carry New Zealand wool to England

Flora Scales, accompanied by her father, sails to London, England, to attend W. Frank Calderon School of Animal Painting

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

Katherine Mansfield to London on the SS Papanui with allowance of £100 per annum, 6 July

First exhibition of the Allied Artists Association, England. Organised by Frank Rutter to promote Modernist art in Britain.

Sergei Diaghilev stages Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov with Fyodor Chaliapin in the leading role at the Paris Opéra, France

Publication of ‘Notes d’un Peintre’ by Henri Matisse, La Grande Revue, 25 December

Publication of Abstraction and Empathy by Wilhelm Worringer

1909

Neue Künstlervereinigung (New Artist Association) formed by Wassily Kandinsky, Marianne von Werefkin, Gabriele Münter, Alexej von Jawlensky. First exhibition Munich, Germany, 1 December.

National Loan Exhibition, Grafton Galleries, London. Held to raise funds for the National Gallery, London, England.

First season of Russian Ballet Saison Russe, Paris, France

Publication of Manifesto of Futurism by Filippo Marinetti

Birth of Rodney Kennedy, Dunedin, New Zealand, 20 August

Roger Fry is employed at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, England, to teach a course titled ‘The Appreciation of Design in the History of Art’ in a position he holds until 1914. – ‘History of the Department’ by Professor David Bindman, Department of History of Art, University College of London, England, 2015

1910

Birth of Harry Westacott, Clapham, London, 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.

Death of King Edward VII, England

Second exhibition of the Neue Kunstlervereinigung, Munich, Germany, 1 September

Exhibition of Berlin Secession, Berlin, Germany

Formation of Neue Secession Group by expressionist artists who had been excluded from the 1910 Berlin Secession, led by Max Pechstein. First exhibition, ‘Rejected Artists of the Secession Berlin 1910’, Berlin, Germany.

Roger Fry curates Manet and the Post Impressionists, Grafton Galleries, London, England, 8 November - 15 January. The exhibition “…met with an uproar…Critics claimed that the exhibition was part of a “widespread plot to destroy the whole fabric of European painting.” The public decried the “bad taste” of the show, and the works Fry praised; Virginia Woolf declared that it sent the public into “paroxysms of rage and laughter.1 1 A.J. Finberg, Star 14 December 1910” – ‘Roger Fry and the Origins of "Post-Impressionism"’ by Elizabeth Berkowitz, https://www.artsy.net/article/user-5123b03588914a48e800011d-roger-fry-and-the-origins-of-post-impressionism

Virginia Woolf, pinpointing the cataclysmic impact of this exhibition on English art and society, wrote: “…on or about December 1910 human character changed…”, then later, “And so the smashing and crashing began.” – Woolf, Virginia, The Hogarth Essays: Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown, Hogarth Press, London, England, 1924, pg 4 / 20

Henry Tonks, Professor of Fine Art, Slade School of Fine Art, London, England, apparently unfettered by a sense of loyalty to his colleague Roger Fry, advised his students, “...he could only warn us and say how very much better pleased he would be if we did not risk contamination but stayed away [from the exhibition].57 57 Paul Nash, Outline, Autobiography and Other Writings (London: faber 1949), p. 65” – Potter, Matthew C. (editor), The Concept of the ‘Master’ in Art Education Britain and Ireland, 1770 to the Present, Routledge, 2016, pg 138

Bloomsbury Group member Vanessa Bell recalled: “That autumn of 1910 is to me a time when everything seemed springing to new life – a time when all was a sizzle of excitement, new relationships, new ideas, different and intense emotions all seemed crowding into ones life” – Spalding, Frances, Vanessa Bell: Portrait of the Bloomsbury Artist, Tauris Parke Paperbacks, London, England, 2016, pp 92-93

Hans Hofmann exhibits Paul Cassirer Gallery, Berlin, Germany, 25 June - 10 July

Ballets Russes (founded by Sergei Diaghilev) produces Schéhérazade, Carnaval, Firebird, Le Spectre de la Rose, sets by Léon Bakst, Paris, France

Birth of Mountford Tosswill (Toss) Woollaston, Toko, Stratford, New Zealand, 11 April

1911

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

Der Blaue Reiter formed in Munich, Germany, 11 December. First exhibition included work by Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Paul Klee and August Macke.

Third exhibition of the Neue Kunstlervereinigung, Munich, Germany, 18 December

Founding of the Camden Town Group, London, England. A sixteen member, men only group of English Post-Impressionist artists which lasted until 1913.

Salon des Indépendants 26th Exhibition, Grand Palais, Paris, France. Cubists Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Robert Delaunay, André Lhote, Marie Laurencin, Henri le Fauconnier, and others hung together in Room 41, not, as was usually done, with artists’ names in alphabetical order throughout the galleries.

First Ballets Russes performance, Covent Garden, London, England

Die Brücke move to Berlin, Germany

Birth of Patricia France, Stratford, New Zealand, 29 May

1912

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.

Exhibition of 140 paintings rejected by the selectors for the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition at McGregor Wright Gallery, 129 Lambton Quay, Wellington, New Zealand

Exhibition of British art comprising 400 paintings by 170 artists, such as Walter Sickert, Édouard Manet, Henry Scott Tuke and Henry Moore, curated by John Baillie and George Clausen, Harbour Board Shed U, Wellington, New Zealand, April – June. Charles Wilson for The Press on the exhibition reported: “There is here no influence of Gauguin and Matisse, or the wilder and weirder of the Post-Impressionists, the cubists are absent…” – ‘Our literary corner. British art. The exhibition at Wellington’ by Charles Wilson, The Press, 27 April 1912, pg 9

Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition, British, French and Russian Artists, Grafton Galleries, London, England, 5 October - 31 December

Publication of Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky

Publication of Du Cubisme by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger

Salon des Indépendants, Paris, France, 20 March - 16 May

Salon d’Automne, Paris, France, 1 October - 8 November

Second exhibition of Der Blaue Reiter, Munich, Germany

Election of William Massey as Prime Minister, New Zealand, until 1925

1913

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

Omega Workshops Ltd. established by Roger Fry, 33 Fitzroy Square, London, England

Armory Show (International Exhibition of Modern Art), New York, Chicago, Boston, USA

German Autumn Salon, Berlin, Germany

Disbanding of Die Brücke, Berlin, Germany

Skandalkonzert ("scandal concert") held in the Great Hall of the Musikverein, Vienna, Austria, Arnold Schoenberg conducts music by Webern, von Zemlinsky, Berg and Schoenberg, 31 March. The audience responds with tumultuous riots.

Ballets Russes production of Le Sacre du Printemps, Paris, France, is presented to a rioting audience, 29 May

A caricature of Skandalkonzert ("scandal concert") held in the Great Hall of the Musikverein, Vienna, Austria, 31 March, featured in Die Zeit, 6 April 1913 
Image: Unknown author, Die Zeithttp://news.orf.at/stories/2175106/2175105/ 

1914

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

First World War declared, 28 July

Panama Canal opens, 15 August

Disbanding of Der Blaue Reiter, Germany

Hans Hofmann returns to Germany, is influenced by Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1910) and meets Gabriele Münter, a friend of Maria Wolfegg

Birth of Ivy Marjorie Mappin (Marjorie), Auckland, New Zealand, 22 May

Birth of Theodore Jasper MacLean de Lange (Theo), Simla, India, 16 June

1915

G. H. Scales has driving accident, as reported by the Dominion, 4 January

Death of Cecil Hastings Jack Scales, Gallipoli, Turkey, 30 May

Flora Scales contributes a painting of horses in a dray [Location Unknown] to an exhibition arranged by Messrs W. H. Turnbull & Co. at the Panama St Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand, to raise funds for the purchase of a water filter for the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in Turkey, May

Flora Scales exhibits
*Messrs W. H. Turnbull & Co., Wellington, May
*New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, Wellington
*Otago Art Society Annual Exhibition, Dunedin
*Canterbury Society of Arts Annual Exhibition, Christchurch
*Auckland Society of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition

Death of George Arthur Maynard Scales, Oxfordshire, England, of wounds incurred in battle, Gallipoli, Turkey, 18 December

Flora Scales plants a rose bush beside the painting of a pumpkin at Pumpkin Cottage, Silverstream, Upper Hutt, New Zealand

Birth of Garry Owen Evers- Swindell, Lower Hutt, New Zealand, 12 July

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

Hans Hofmann opens his Schule für Bildende Kunst (School of Fine Art), Munich, Germany

Hans Hofmann's theories formulate and make clear the ideas that Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Robert Delaunay and Henri Matisse are developing in their ground-breaking work of the early 1900s in Paris, France. Particularly influential for Hofmann are Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Georges Braque's Houses at l'Estaque (1908), in which he sees a radically new conception of space and form based on the work of Paul Cézanne. 

Prospectus, Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art, Munich, Germany, 1915
Photo: Seitz, William Chapin, Hans Hofmann with selected writings by the artist, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA, 1963, pg 56

1916

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

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

Founding of New Zealand Labour Party

Pablo Picasso exhibits Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Salon d’Antin, L' Art Moderne en France, Galerie Barbazanges, 109, Faubourg Saint Honoré, Paris, France, July

1917

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

Russian Revolution, 1917-1918

1918

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

Influenza pandemic strikes New Zealand, October - December

Treaty of Versailles signed, formally ending World War I, 28 June

Weimar Republic established, 9 November

Armistice signed between Germany and Allies, 11 November

1919

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

Weimar Republic Constitution signed, 11 August

Birth of Janet Elaine Paul (nee Wilkinson), Auckland, New Zealand, 9 November

The Seven and Five Society formed, London, England

Hotel Majestic taken over by the British delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference, Paris, France

Birth of Colin John McCahon, Timaru, New Zealand, 1 August

1920

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

In Paris, France, the 1920s sees a decade of mounting political tension:
*The rise of the National Socialist Party
*Victory of Lenin’s Red Army
*March on Rome puts Mussolini in power

Gertrude Stein coins the term “the lost generation” and the French refer to the decade as “les années folles”, “the crazy years”. American artists and writers in Paris revelled in this decade and labelled it ‘The Roaring Twenties’. Paris was cheap for the expatriates and, while many Parisians were impoverished and suffering, they were able to live well; the life of their dreams.

French National Assembly approves 500,000 francs for the building of the first mosque in Paris, France

International Dada Fair opens Berlin, Germany, 5 June

New Zealand Divorce Amendment Act passes allowing divorce after three years of separation

Opening of Mr E. Murray Fuller’s private gallery, McDonald Building, Willis Street, next to the Albert Hotel, Wellington, New Zealand. The gallery holds a permanent exhibition of work by New Zealand artists including Archibald F. Nicoll, H. Linley Richardson, T. A. McCormack, Nugent Welch, John Weeks, Flora Scales, D.K. Richmond and Edith Barker, as reported by New Zealand Times, 30 October, The Evening Post, 13 November, New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Exhibition Catalogue. The gallery has many changes of address; by September 1921 it was at Vickers House corner of Woodward Street and The Terrace, September 1922 it was at 190 Lambton Quay and by September 1924 it was at 236 Lambton Quay. By 1923 the gallery included work by British artists such as Lamorna Birch.

First meeting League of Nations, Geneva, Switzerland, 15 November

1921

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

New Zealand Country Women’s Institute founded in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand

New Zealand women enter public service as “Temporary Employees”. Permanent status is achieved in 1947

1922

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

Foundation of New Zealand Federation of University Women formed

Vaclav Vytlacil studies at Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art, Munich, Germany, 1922-1926

Première of Ballets Russes’ Le Renard, choreography by Bronislava Nijinska; music by Igor Stravinsky; sets and costumes by Mikhail Larionov, Paris, France, May

Dinner party hosted by Sydney and Violet Schiff at the Hotel Majestic, Paris, France, following the premiere of Le Renard. Attended by 40-50 guests, including members of the Ballets Russes, friends of the ballet, painters, writers, dressmakers, and ladies of fashion, as reported by Clive Bell, who was present. At the high table are the foremost leaders of the Modernist movement, Sergei Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Proust and James Joyce. It was to be Proust’s last outing. He arrives at 2am.

Silent German Expressionist horror film Nosferatu released, directed by F. W. Murnau, Germany, 4 March

1923

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

Formation of the USSR

Death of Katherine Mansfield, aged 35, France, 9 January

The Dawes Plan helps stabilise the Weimar Republic with more reasonable reparation after WWI, signed Paris, France

Germany enters League of Nations, economy bolstered by flow of American dollars

1924

Flora Scales exhibits New Shoes for Old [Location Unknown] at the British Empire Exhibition, Palace of Arts, Wembley, London, England, 23 April

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

First Labour Government in UK formed under Ramsay MacDonald, January

Publication of Surrealist Manifesto by André Breton, Paris, France

Première of Ballets Russes Le Train Bleu, choreography by Bronislava Nijinska; music by Darius Milhaud; costumes by Coco Chanel; sets by Pablo Picasso, Paris, France

Publication of La Peinture et ses Lois by Albert Gleizes, Paris, France

Marriage of Hans Hofmann and Maria Wolfegg, Munich, Germany, 5 June

Gabriele Münter, friend of Maria Hofmann, entrusts at least 23 paintings by Wassily Kandinsky [it is possible there were over 90 but this has never been established] to the safe care of Maria and Hans Hofmann until around 1927

Paris Olympic Games, France

1925

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

R. N. Field and W. H. Allen arrive in New Zealand to teach at Dunedin Technical School under the La Trobe scheme

Artworks from the British Empire Exhibition are included in the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition, Dunedin, New Zealand, 17 November 1925 - 1 May 1926. Mounted with the assistance of R. N. Field. Scales’s work New Shoes for Old [Location Unknown] is not listed in the catalogue perhaps indicating it was sold at the British Empire Exhibition for the modest price of £5 5s.

Publication of Pedagogical Notebooks by Paul Klee, commissioned by Bauhaus, Germany

New Zealand Women’s Division Farmers Union formed

New Zealand Family Allowances Act passes, allowing a payment for the third child, and subsequent children, after a means test

International Exhibition of Modern, Decorative and Industrial Arts, Paris, France, 28 April - 25 October

Académie Andre Lhote established, 18 rue d’Odessa, Montparnasse, Paris, France

Film Battleship Potemkin released, directed by Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 21 December

1926

Flora Scales exhibits
*Canterbury Society of Arts Annual Exhibition, 11 March
*Nelson Suter Art Society Annual Exhibition, November
*New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition
*Wanganui Arts and Crafts Exhibition

Death of Hermina Arndt, Wellington, New Zealand, 22 December

18 women appointed as Justices of the Peace, New Zealand

Publication of Point and Line to Plane by Wassily Kandinsky, commissioned by Bauhaus, Germany

Anna Pavlova visits New Zealand, first performance in Auckland, 26 May

Première of Ballets Russes Roméo and Juliette, choreography by Bronislava Nijinska; music by Constant Lambert; sets by Max Ernst and Jean Miró; costumes by Jean Miró, Théâtre de Monte-Carlo, Monaco, 4 May

1927

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.”

First exhibition by ‘The Group’, Christchurch, New Zealand, subsequent exhibitions held in 1929, 1931, 1932 and 1935. This association of artists aimed to provide a freer, more experimental, alternative to the exhibitions of the Canterbury Society of Arts. Members include Colin McCahon, Toss Woollaston, Rita Angus, Olivia Spencer Bower and Rata Lovell-Smith.

Rhona Haszard paints The Marne Valley, France

Publication of The Non-Objective World by Kasimir Malevich, commissioned by Bauhaus, Germany

Publication of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

First “talkie” film The Jazz Singer released, directed by Alan Crosford, USA, 6 October

E. D. Kinzinger marries American artist Alice Fish 

1928

Flora Scales departs Wellington, New Zealand, for Southampton, England, on the SS Ruahine, 3 February. Scales in conversation with M de Lange, 1982, explained that a Third class ticket cost £70. Her father saw her name on the passenger list and offered to buy her a First class ticket but she refused. Friends said she should have asked for the money instead but she would not do that. Scales also explained that she left to go overseas to a large extent because this enabled her to be free to work on her art without being constantly called on to help various members of her family in New Zealand.

Flora Scales arrives Southampton, England, 10 March. Her address is recorded as c/- Thackeray Hotel, Great Russell St, London [Bloomsbury].

G. H. Scales and Ella Lilian Scales in San Francisco, en-route to London, 11 May. From here they travel to Seymour Court, Marlow, Buckinghamshire, England, to a house Scales either owned or rented.

Flora Scales and cousin Constance Hamersley travel together to Paris, France, via Concarneau, where they visit artist Sydney Lough Thompson. Scales has arranged six months prior to arrival to lodge at YWCA, Montparnasse.

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

Flora Scales moves to Hotel Pierre Nicole, 34 rue Pierre Nicole, 5ème, (the Latin Quarter), Paris, France

Flora Scales meets Boris (Bobby) Kalachnikoff on boulevard de Port-Royal, 5ème, Paris, France. Kalachnikoff, aged four, takes Flora to meet his family.

Flora Scales learns French “from kind French people who gave me lessons at night for nothing at all.” – Flora Scales in conversation with Janet Paul, Rotorua, New Zealand, 27 March 1979

G. H. Scales and Ella Lilian Scales return to New Zealand

Death of George Herbert Scales, Wellington, New Zealand, 20 November. His legacy to his eldest daughter, Flora, was 2/20 of his total estate, which included:
*George H. Scales Pacific Ltd.
*Geo. H. Scales Ltd.
*Kuhawai property, Lower Hutt, New Zealand
*Possibly property at Seymour Court, Marlow, Buckinghamshire, England

Flora Scales briefly attends the Académie Colarossi, Paris, France, but finds it “too dark and stuffy” and moves down the road to the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. “About eighty men and women there. Afternoon classes were cheaper. In the afternoon quick sketches from life for which you paid 6d. Poses lasted three quarters of an hour, then twenty minutes, then fifteen minutes. Towards four o’clock, five minute poses when the model was getting tired. It was all students and smoke.” - Flora Scales in conversation with Janet Paul, Rotorua, New Zealand, 27 March 1979

Boris Kalachnikoff recalls: “In the evenings we used to go to a modest and pleasant restaurant, Madame Wadja’s ... we used to eat enormous apple cakes with fresh cream.” Madame Wadja’s is at no. 10 rue de la Grande Chaumière, part of the shop front of the Académie Colarossi, and opposite Madame Charlotte’s Crèmerie café at no. 13, which is painted inside floor to ceiling by penniless artists and decorated outside by Alphonse Mucha, who lives above.

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

While Flora Scales is working at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière she meets Jan Darna, the professional name of Charles Taddei (1901-1974), who was an English speaking instructor there, 1927- 1929. She reports that “he gave me wonderful hints about good drawing”. Darna's comments on various artists are recorded by Scales in her Esquisse Sketchbook [Untitled [Esquisse sketchbook] [BC118]], donated to the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, MS-Papers-1893-2.

First of six exhibitions of contemporary British art brought to New Zealand by Mr and Mrs E Murray Fuller shown at the Whitmore Street Gallery of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts 13-26 April. The exhibition of 240 works included such artists such as Arnesby Brown, Harold Speed and W. Lee Hankey. Further exhibitions were held in 1930, 1932, and following Edwin’s death in 1933, Mrs Anne Murray Fuller arranged exhibitions in 1935, 1936 and 1940.

New Zealand Girls’ Life Brigade established, Dunedin, New Zealand

Publication of The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

Publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence

Women’s Suffrage, England, Wales and Scotland

Hans Hofmann teaches summer art school St Tropez, France

E. D. Kinzinger teaches at the Minneapolis Art Institute, Minnesota, USA

E.D. Kinzinger, March 1928
Photo: Courtesy Minneapolis Newspaper Photograph Collection, Hennepin County Library, Minnesota, USA, Ref P45698, https://digitalcollections.hclib.org/digital/collection/MplsPhotos/id/45442/rec/1

1929

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, England, 16 March

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

Patience Reeves attends boarding school in Christchurch, New Zealand

Hans Hofmann teaches summer school in St Tropez, France, July, August and September

Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts Summer Course Prospectus, St Tropez, Southern France, July, August, September 1929
Photo: Courtesy The Martin and Harriet Diamond Collection, Rutgers Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

Note, the address Hofmann uses in St Tropez, the address of Monsieur and Madame Coccoz, is where Flora Scales and Boris Kalachnikoff stayed in their summer holidays.

The house of Monsieur and Madame Coccoz, 76 rue Sibilli, St Tropez, France, overlooking the Place des Lices where Hans Hofmann stayed during the summer of 1929 and where Flora Scales and Boris Kalachnikoff stayed in the summer holidays during the 1930s.

In their book We Lead a Double Life, the American twin sisters, Ruth and Helen Hoffman, give a lively account of their experience at the St Tropez summer school in 1929, which also provides an apt description of the scene as witnessed by Frances Hodgkins, Gwen Knight and Flora Scales in the summer of 1931 when the art school is run by E. D. Kinzinger. “The Mediterranean in summer was like a large warm lake. The tourist season on the Riviera was over and the prices went down. For this reason, Hans Hofmann's summer painting class was located here in Tropez, a fishing village. We found rooms in a small – very small – hotel just off the wharf where for the equivalent of a dollar and a half we got a double room and two meals a day in the pension restaurant downstairs…

Every morning you carried your easel and paint box and went out to the spot where you wanted to paint or draw. Maybe on the wharf, up on the hill behind the town, or in one of the narrow streets that all led to the water. 

Hans Hofmann and his interpreter, Wessels, knew just where each painter was, and they made the rounds each day to give criticism. It was like nothing we had been taught before. We were nonplussed when we were told that a mountain, though it was far away and seemed small, could be painted larger than a house that was close, because it actually was larger than the house. Hofmann had become famous in Germany and France and was about to come to the United States to teach and to finish writing his book on painting. He had a theory all his own about line, rhythm, tension, and composition. It was sometimes quite incomprehensible to us. But we worked on in this extraordinary town because we hoped gradually to learn what Hofmann was talking about. Also, we were thrilled at every sight: the markets in the early morning where fish of all descriptions lay on their beds of seaweed; the flower stalls with their unpaintable colors, and the view of the gulf of St. Maxime on which every kind of craft moved or floated at anchor.” – Hoffman, Ruth and Helen, We Lead a Double Life, J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia and New York, USA, 1957, pp 250-251

Hoffman, Ruth and Helen, We Lead a Double Life, J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia and New York, USA, 1957, pp 250-251

Gwen Knight in Munich, Germany, attends the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art, 30 October 1929 - 2 April 1930

Gwen Knight's registration papers, Munich, Germany, 1929
Photo: Courtesy City Archives, Munich, Germany, 01.10.2020, reference (EWK65/G/443)

Première of Ballets Russes Le Fils Prodigue, choreography by George Balanchine; music by Sergei Prokofiev; sets and costumes by Georges Rouault, Paris, France

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designs the German Pavilion of the Barcelona International Exhibition, Spain (reconstructed Barcelona, Spain, 1986)

Seven and Five Society Exhibition, London, England, 7-28 March. Frances Hodgkins and Len Lye participate.

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) opens, New York, USA

First ceremony of the Academy Awards, Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood, USA, 16 May

“Black Thursday”, Wall Street crash, New York, USA, 24 October

W. H. Allen in Art in New Zealand writes: “The work to be seen in Dominion exhibitions may be likened to that of an old man – for the most part it is ‘safe’, represents a past age, avoids all experiment and is full of sentiment. What are the reasons for this? ... the bold and original spirits among the budding artists of this country inevitably find their way to Europe ...” – Art in New Zealand, vol. 1, no. 4, June 1929, pg 215

New Zealand Bush Nursing Service launched to assist rural women

Christopher Perkins arrives in New Zealand to teach at Wellington Technical College

E. D. Kinzinger teaches at the Minneapolis Art Students League, Minnesota, USA, to 1930

1930

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

US stock market crash, 29 October

Margaret Butler attends Bourdelle School in Paris, France

Gwen Knight paints in the South of France

Hans Hofmann teaches at University of California, Berkeley, USA, 19 May - 28 June, spends winter in Munich, Germany, 1930-1931

Exhibition of Italian Art, 1200-1900, Royal Academy, Burlington House, London, England, January - March

International Exhibition of Abstract Art, Paris, France, 18 April - 1 May

E. D. Kinzinger becomes Director of the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art, Munich, Germany, 1930-1933

Birth of John Drawbridge, Wellington, New Zealand, 27 December

1931

Flora Scales paints and sketches in the South of France. Her work of this period includes the vibrant cubistic Untitled [Mediterranean Scene] 1 and 2 [BC016, BC017] and the views over the town of St Tropez, such as Basilica and Lighthouse, St Tropez, Southern France [BC021].

Flora Scales describes her delight in travelling by train to the South of France in conversation with Linda Gill, 27 August 1976: "...through the most wonderful landscape – the houses are pink and they rise straight out of the grapevines which are yellow."

In St Tropez, Flora Scales stays in a Pension, in the house of Madame Coccoz, 76 rue Sibilli, Place des Lices. She remembers the outdoor restaurant on a verandah and crossing a park [Place des Lices] with six big Elm trees where she sometimes sat and talked with Frances Hodgkins.

The Evening Post reports: “Maude Burge and Flora Scales were staying last summer [1931] at St Tropez in the South of France with Frances Hodgkins and Gwen Knight of Wellington and all were attending a summer school there. Mr & Mrs Burge, both well known in New Zealand, entertained the artists at their villa.” – ‘Valuable Pictures’, The Evening Post, 25 January, 1932

Maude Mary Annie Burge (nee Williams) (18 May 1865 - 20 May 1957) was 22 years older than Flora Scales. Her parents lived in Hobson Street, Thorndon, Wellington, New Zealand, near Scales's maternal grandparents' house in Aurora Terrace. It is likely the two families at least knew of each other and that Burge was not a stranger to Scales when they met and painted together with Frances Hodgkins and Gwen Knight in St Tropez, France, in May 1931.

Gwen Knight's parents also live in this part of Wellington, on The Terrace above Woodward Street, until 1892 when they move to Australia. Gwen is four years old.

In Toss Woollaston: origins & influence (Gordon H. Brown Lecture 02, Victoria University Press, Wellington, New Zealand, 2004, pp 24-25), Art History Professor Tony Green notes that Burge and her husband, George, studied under E. D. Kinzinger at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art in Munich, Germany, citing Frances Hodgkins's letter to her brother, William, in 1931. This is a misinterpretation of the letter in which there is no mention of Munich but reads, “Later on a young German Professor of Painting [Kinzinger] turned up with a class and I lived to see both of them [George and Maude Burge] taking up art seriously and from a most advanced angle - marvellous wasn't it?” (Letters of Frances Hodgkins, ed. Linda Gill, Auckland University Press, New Zealand, 1993, pp 439-442, letter 440, 12 November 1931). Anton Löffelmeier, Munich Archives, Germany, to B. de Lange, 12.11.2021, states that “research into the stay of Maude Mary Annie Burge and her husband George Aylesford Burge in Munich did not produce any evidence in the registration documents", suggesting that it is unlikely the Burge’s attended the Hofmann School in Munich.

The date of the first paragraph of a page of handwritten notes by Flora Scales [see image below and Untitled [Loose Leaf Pages] [BC112]] headed “9th” and continuing, “Lesson, you must be deliberate in putting on colour…E.D.K, St Tropez” can be reasonably assumed to be 1931, the only summer Scales and Kinzinger are in St Tropez at the same time. This suggests Scales not only knew Kinzinger before arriving at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art, Munich, Germany, in October 1932, but had already participated in his art classes and was familiar with at least some of the significant theories she will encounter in Munich.  

Excerpt from An accompanied solitude, an essay by Boris Kalachnikoff, January 1991, “[Flora Scales] had an artist friend, Miss Knight, with whom she had warm and sincere conversations and exchanged paintings in a friendly way, in the sunny countryside of St Tropez.”

Apparently it was Gwen Knight who advised Scales to travel to Munich for a longer and more concentrated period of tuition at the Hans Hofmann School where she herself had spent six months, 3 October 1929 - 2 April 1930.

Page from Untitled [Loose Leaf Pages] [BC112]

Vanessa Bell, in a letter to Virginia Woolf, from Cassis, France, 5 February, 1927 describes the South of France: “Painting is a different thing here from what it can be in the winter in England. It's never dark even when the sky is grey. The light in the Penrose studio is perfect and even now one could even work out of doors, if one wanted to. It makes so much difference to be sure one won’t suddenly be held up in the middle of something by fog or darkness. Also the beauty is a constant delight. The people are very friendly and helpful and living is very cheap … it seems more and more ridiculous for painters to spend half their lives in the dark” – Spalding, Frances, Vanessa Bell: Portrait of the Bloomsbury Artist, Tauris Parke Paperbacks, London, England, 2016, pg 216

E. D. Kinzinger teaches summer school, St Tropez, France

Frances Hodgkins at Hôtel Sube, St Tropez, France, June. Excerpt from Letters of Frances Hodgkins, ed. Linda Gill, Auckland University Press, New Zealand, 1993, pp 441-442, letter 438 to Dorothy Selby from the Hotel Sube in St Tropez, 25 June, 1931, from St Tropez, France: “There is a Professor from Munich here who is making them stretch their brains. He is very able – and a good lecturer – young and nice looking with a charming pyjama-ed American wife…His principles are sound – even if one dislikes his sort of art.” Gill’s footnote no. 39 for this letter states that the Professor was Edmund Daniel Kinzinger.

Hans Hofmann teaches at the Chouinard School of Art, Los Angeles, USA, in the spring, and at the University of California, Berkeley, July and August. His teaching provides a platform for the development of mid-20th century American Abstract Expressionism. Hofmann's first two exhibitions in the USA are staged at the Havilland Hall, Art Department, University of California, Berkeley, and at the California Palace of the Legion of Honour, San Francisco.

Hans Hofmann returns to Munich, Germany, to teach in autumn 1931 - spring 1932

Great Depression hits Paris, France. Rising political tension between Le Front Populaire and Action Française.

Collapse of the German mark, four million unemployed, closure of banks, July

Death of Rhona Haszard, Egypt

Femmes Artistes Modernes (F.A.M.) exhibit annually, Paris, France, 1931-1938

1932

“Miss Flora Scales has arrived in Christchurch to spend several months with her mother. For the last four years Miss Scales has been studying art in England and Europe [1928 – 1932].” – ‘Art Notes’, Art in New Zealand, June, 1932, vol. IV, no. 16, pg 291

Flora Scales reported to M. de Lange that she destroyed any drawing of “that nature” [life drawings] before she returned to New Zealand (date unspecified) as they would not have been understood by her mother, “darling mummy”, or family, or, for that matter, anyone she knew here [in New Zealand]. – The Notebooks of Marjorie de Lange recording conversations with Flora Scales, 1982-1983

Flora Scales exhibits New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Autumn Exhibition, Wellington, June. Her painting titled St Tropez [Location Unknown] is one of a group deemed to be “modern, or even ultra-modern, art” and is described as achieving “an extraordinary kaleidoscopic effect with splashes of colour.” – The Evening Post, Thursday 2 June, 1932, pg 9

Flora Scales travels to Munich, Germany with her cousin, Constance Hamersley. She attends the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art under the direction of E. D. Kinzinger, 14 October 1932 - 16 June 1933, after which she returns to Paris, France. Kinzinger is the Director in place of Hofmann who is teaching in America. Constance does not attend the school.

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.

Hans Hofmann teaches at Chouinard School of Art, Los Angeles, USA, 1 June - 31 August and at Art Students League, New York, September

Maria Hofmann advises her husband, Hans, not to return to Germany from the USA

E. D. Kinzinger teaches summer school at St Tropez, France

Helen Mary Stewart attends Académie Lhote, Paris, France. Also attends classes given by Vaclav Vytlacil. Vytlacil was never a teacher at the Académie Lhote, as confirmed in a letter from Dominique Bermann Martin, André Lhote’s niece, to B. de Lange, 26 February 2023. Vytlacil’s classes were probably held at 7 Villa Brune, 75014 Paris, France. Vytlacil was closely associated with Hans Hofmann; he taught at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art, Munich, Germany, and facilitated Hofmann’s move to America. Thus both Scales and Stewart experienced Hofmann’s teachings at one remove through his acolytes, Kinzinger and Vytlacil.

On the Munich Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art, Tina Dickey writes, “Vytlacil described the school as a “small, dingy, poverty-ridden single studio, one of a number of small studios in a two-story bleak and dismal building,” actually a garten-haus (house in back), reached through a small alley behind a massive apartment building. “Upon entering the studio, “recounted Vytlacil, “the first impression gained was one of usual artist poverty. No furniture of any kind; it was too small to allow any floor space for that.” North light glowed through a large window on one wall. Students set up to draw from the model on a wooden floor, raised in steps toward the back of the room. The school was cold in winter because of ongoing coal shortages, so the model stand was placed near the pot-bellied stove, the only source of heat.”

And on the structure of the school, “Students could enroll in the school at any time during the year but were expected to attend for at least a month. Three hours each morning, they drew from the model, followed by a two-hour lunch break, during which they returned to their pensions for a full dinner and maybe a nap before the afternoon painting class with a still life or portrait model. After another break at four or five o’clock, the Abendakt (evening life drawing session) started at about seven. The Abendakt, open to all Munich artists, became quite popular in the 1920s…Hofmann considered the students’ life outside school to be an equally important part of the curriculum. He reminded his students, “When the inner impulse is lacking, then the hand must sink, then one ought not to work.” Toward the end of his long teaching career, he wrote: Since life is the great educator in art, the student must be given absolute freedom – in action as well as reaction – he must be permitted to go to museums, he must be allowed to study in libraries, he must be lively engaged in outdoor work and in work done at home entirely by himself, he must see galleries and must be in constant contact with the daily happenings in the art world.” - Dickey, Tina, Color Creates Light: Studies with Hans Hofmann, Trillistar Books, Canada, 2011, pp 78-79

The “angry autumn” in New Zealand, New Zealand’s worst year of the Depression, a bitterly cold winter, police respond with force to riots by the unemployed

Canterbury College School of Art 50th Anniversary Exhibition, CSA Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand, over 200 artworks on display

Opening of Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand

Formation of Dominion Federation of Townswomen’s Guilds, New Zealand

First catalogue produced for the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Autumn/Sketch Exhibition, Wellington

Bauhaus (Dessau), Germany dissolved, moves to Berlin as a private institution

Toss Woollaston leaves Mapua, New Zealand, for Dunedin to study with R.N. Field at the Dunedin Technical School

E. Murray Fuller arranges third Contemporary British Art exhibition which opens at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Whitmore Street Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand, 26 February. Includes paintings by William Orpen, Frank Brangwyn, Walter Sickert, William Flint, Lucy Kemp Welch, Lamorna Birch and William Nicholson.

Geneva Disarmament Conference begins, Switzerland

Bitterly cold winter in France

Albert Einstein writes to Sigmund Freud asking if he thought it possible to guide the psychological development of human-kind to become resistant to the psychoses of hate and destruction, thereby delivering civilisation from the menace of war. Freud replies that “there was not much likelihood of suppressing humanity’s most aggressive tendencies ... still, he continues, the hope that war will end is chimerical. ... anything which creates emotional ties between human beings counteracts war. What had to be sought was a community of feeling.” – McCann, Colum, Apeirogon, Bloomsbury Publishing, New York, 2020, pg 106

 

1933

Flora Scales concludes her studies at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art, Munich, Germany, 10 June. It is presumed that this is when E. D. Kinzinger gives Flora Scales an untitled pencil drawing dated 1932 (Collection Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Ref. no. A-253-028). Scales in conversation with B. de Lange, 1983, “when he said goodbye forever.”

Flora Scales returns to Paris, France

It is likely that Flora Scales is painting in St Tropez, France, Summer

Flora Scales departs London, England, for Auckland, New Zealand, on RMS Remuera, 29 September

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."

Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany, 30 January

Death of E. Murray Fuller, February

Inauguration of the Third Reich, 21 March

Adolf Hitler’s Enabling Act is presented to and passed by the Reichstag, 23 March. The act enables Hitler to rule by decree, without involvement of the Reichstag or consultation with the Weimar President, establishing the conditions needed for dictatorial rule.

Establishment of the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Chamber of Culture), Germany, September. Joseph Goebbels appointed Minister in Charge of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

Termination of the Weimar Republic

Bauhaus disbanded, Germany. Many of the faculty, including Walter Gropius, Josef Albers, Lazlo Maholy-Nagy and Ludwig Mies van de Rohe, emigrate to America.

E. D. Kinzinger teaches Summer School in Murnau, Bavaria, Germany. With his students he visits Gabriele Münther who is sheltering many of Kandinsky's artworks, studies, sketchbooks and notes in a room with a walled-up door against their seizure as examples of the so-called degenerate art outlawed by the Reichskulturkammer.

Hans Hofmann opens the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts, 444 Madison Avenue, New York, USA. Between 1933 and 1938 the Hofmann School moves to three different New York addresses. The final address in 1938 is 52 West 8th Street.

New Zealand unemployment figures reach 80-100,000

Elizabeth McCombs is the first woman elected to New Zealand Parliament, 13 September

First exhibition of New Zealand Society of Artists, Christchurch, 27 October

Gwen Knight, Frances Hodgkins, Maude Burge and May Smith spend time in Ibiza

Christopher Perkins leaves New Zealand

Rata Lovell-Smith paints Hawkins, New Zealand

Posthumous exhibition of paintings by Rhona Haszard, arranged by her husband, Leslie Greener, New Zealand

L’Ecole de L’Epoque art school established and directed by E. D. Kinzinger, Paris, France, 1933-1934, as reported in The Daily Iowan, Thursday 30 July 1942, pg 3

1934

Toss Woollaston arranges a series of conversations with Flora Scales, Nelson, New Zealand, May - June. The sessions are brought to an end after the fourth meeting as Scales is offended by the idea that Woollaston regards her as his mentor, when she considers herself to be an artist not a teacher. – M de Lange Notebooks recording conversations with Flora Scales, 1982-1983

Flora Scales sends letter from Tahunanui, Nelson, New Zealand, to New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, Wellington, requesting permission to submit two paintings made at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art, Munich, Germany, 24 August. This request was duly accepted.

Flora Scales exhibits 
*Nelson Suter Art Society Annual Exhibition, Nelson, 2 September
*New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition, Wellington, 28 September
*New Zealand Society of Artists Second Exhibition, Christchurch, 26 October

Flora Scales is befriended by the Ostenfeld family, Nelson, New Zealand. Scales gifts several artworks to Mrs Elizabeth Ostenfeld, Nelson, New Zealand. In 1965, Mrs Ostenfeld gave both Untitled [Mediterranean Scene] I [BC016] and Untitled [Mediterranean Scene] 2 [BC017] to her son, Neil Ostenfeld, who in turn gave them both to his sister Mrs Margaret Candy. Letter from Mrs Candy to B. de Lange, 29.09.1983, “I was told that the paintings we have were actually painted in France and brought back here with her. The scenes, as you will see from the photos, are certainly Mediterranean in character, and are definitely not of Nelson.

We lived on the Tahunanui hill, above the beach. Miss Scales apparently boarded with a Mrs Lyall not far down the hill from our home. My mother had taken us to the beach to play and Miss Scales approached us because she was very attracted to my brother, (he was four years old at the time) Neil. There are two older brothers and myself, two years younger than Neil. She wanted to adopt Neil and take him to France with her. Naturally my parents were not willing to consent to this plan.

The upshot was that Miss Scales became very friendly with the family and, during the course of the friendship, gave my mother several paintings and drawings. Of these, only the two we have remain in the family. Of the others; I know my mother gave them away during the war years, usually to be raffled at functions designed to raise money for the war effort. I can remember several of these paintings and drawings being stored in the back of a wardrobe! Sacrilege indeed. The ones I remember best were of large houses and gardens – really mansion like buildings done in charcoal or pen and ink.

Miss Scales kept in touch with my mother until the war years. I remember a letter came just after the war, my mother replied but that was the last time we heard from Miss Scales.

I remember my parents talking about the letter and the very hard time Miss Scales had had, the writing of the letter was very wavery and obviously written with great difficulty.

Because we didn't hear any more, the family assumed Miss Scales must have died and it wasn't until the exhibition she had at the Auckland Art Gallery was reviewed in the Auckland Herald (I think) that we found she was still alive. I sent to the Art Gallery for any information and they very kindly sent me a catalogue of the exhibition, it had a photo of Miss Scales in it – and I actually remembered her when I saw it.

I remember her as someone I was frightened of – someone who was gigantically tall and extremely stern. Toss Woollaston doesn't know we have these paintings, although the people at the Suter Art Gallery do and they may have told him.

I hope this information is useful.  I have asked my brother, Neil, if he remembered anything – but he has no recollection of her at all.

Miss Scales did tell my mother of the little French boy she wanted to adopt and said Neil was very like him. We were very pleased to meet Miss France [artist Patricia France] and Mr Kennedy [artist Rodney Kennedy] at Dunedin and learn so much more then. We have found that when we mention Flora Scales, very few people know of her. Toss Woollaston's book has helped, of course.”

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

Röhm Purge or Night of the Long Knives consolidates Hitler’s supreme power, Germany, 30 June - 2 July

Toss Woollaston, aged 24, debates his future career, Mapua, Nelson, New Zealand

E. D. Kinzinger takes up position as Head of Art Department, Baylor University, Texas, USA

Opening of Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art, 137 East 57th Street, New York, USA

Publication of Expressionism in Art by Sheldon Cheney

Death of Kate Sheppard, Christchurch, New Zealand, 13 July

Death of Roger Eliot Fry, London, England, 9 September

Exhibition of British Art, Burlington House, London, England

Margaret Butler returns to New Zealand

First New Zealand Working Women’s Conference debates the issue of equal pay and benefits for women

Empire Art Loan Collections Society, London, England, loans an exhibition of contemporary but conservative British art. The exhibition tours Dunedin, Christchurch, Auckland and Wanganui, New Zealand.

Olivia Spencer Bower paints Olivia, New Zealand

Frederick Page persuades the conductor of the Christchurch Harmonic Society, New Zealand, to give performances of Constant Lambert’s The Rio Grande for choir, piano, brass and jazz percussion. These concerts are presented to enthusiastic audiences and receive glowing reviews.

1935

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

Film Triumph of the Will released, directed by Helene (Leni) Riefenstahl, Germany, 28 March. This controversial work of propaganda showcases Hitler at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, Germany.

Hans Hofmann inaugurates his Summer School in Provincetown, Massachusetts, USA

The Seven and Five Society final exhibition, London, England

Lengthy debate between Kenneth Clark and Herbert Read on the topic of modern art in The Listener, United Kingdom: ‘The Future of Painting’ by Kenneth Clark, The Listener, 2 October, 1935, pg 543; ‘Soviet Realism’ by Herbert Read, The Listener, 2 October, 1935, pg 579; ‘Modern Art in Germany and Russia’, The Listener, 2 October, 1935, pg 545; ‘Ben Nicholson and the Future of Painting’, The Listener, 9 October, 1935, pp 604-5; ‘The Art of Rouault’ by Kenneth Clark, The Listener, 23 October, 1935, pg 706; ‘The Future of Painting’ (in ‘Points from Letters’) by Herbert Read, The Listener, 30 October, 1935, pg 768

New Zealand Labour Government formed under Michael Joseph Savage

Fourth exhibition of contemporary British art at E. Murray Fuller’s Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand, 1 March. This exhibition was organised by Mrs Mary Murray Fuller who said: “... those who had broken away from the conventions of art and had instituted ultra- modern movements were making progress ... There is now in progress a swing back to old traditions, but art had benefited by the upheaval.”

Death of Dorothy Kate Richmond, Wellington, New Zealand, 16 April

E. D. Kinzinger becomes Chairman of the Department of Art, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, USA

1936

Flora Scales’s address recorded as c/- BNZ, 1 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4, England, 25 January

Flora Scales attends Académie Ranson, 7 rue Joseph Bara, Paris, France. Roger Bissière, her teacher, was an instructor there 1923-1939.

Flora Scales visits Toulouse, France with Boris Kalachinikoff, aged 12

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

Abstract and Concrete: An Exhibition of Abstract Painting & Sculpture, 1934 & 1935 curated by Nicolete Gray, opens at 41, St Giles, Oxford, England, 15 February. The exhibition tours to School of Architecture, Liverpool, England, Lefevre Gallery London, England and Gordon Fraser Gallery, Cambridge, England.

Abstract and Concrete: An Exhibition of Abstract Painting & Sculpture, 1934 & 1935 exhibition view, Lefevre Galley, London, England, 1936, featuring Piet Mondrian
Photo: https://theartsdesk.com/visual-arts/mondrian-nicholson-parallel-courtauld-gallery

Exhibition of seventy one artworks illustrating 200 years of British Art, National Art Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand, 1 August. Majority of artworks from Tate and National Galleries, London. Arranged by the Empire Art Loan Collections Society.

International Surrealist Exhibition, New Burlington Galleries, Piccadilly, London, England, 11 June - 4 July. Organised by committees from England, France, Belgium, Scandinavia and Spain. “The exhibition offered the public many different kinds of marvellous; there were over 400 exhibits; paintings, sculptures, ‘surrealist objects’ as well as an array of ‘ethnographic’ items from diverse cultures around the world and ‘natural objects interpreted’. Around 60 artists were represented, including most of the ‘big names’ of European surrealism alongside a range of home grown British artists. It showed, too, that surrealism was always a broader church than its critics tended to give it credit for; less a style or set of styles (many of the artists represented were not necessarily surrealists per se) than a way of seeing, or a way of being…” - ‘11 June 1936: The International Surrealist Exhibition’ by William Pinfold, http://williampinfold.com/82-years-ago-today-the-international-surrealist-exhibition/, 10 June 2018

Spanish Civil War

Berlin Summer Olympic Games, Germany

Rita Angus paints Cass, New Zealand

Jean Batten makes first solo direct flight England - New Zealand

Toss Woollaston guest exhibitor at The Group Annual Exhibition, The Durham Street Galleries (used by the C.S.A.), 282-286 Durham Street, Christchurch, New Zealand

Popular Front Government, France. Léon Blum, Prime Minister, 1936-1937.

1937

Franklin Roosevelt elected President of the USA

Exhibition Salon de Femmes Artistes d’Europe, Jeu de Paume, Paris, France, also travels to New York, USA. Large contribution from Femmes Artistes Moderne [F.A.M.].

Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, Palais de Chaillot, Paris, France, 25 May - 25 November. Raoul Dufy commissioned to decorate the Pavilion of Light and Electricity, produces 600m2 mural La Fée Electricité.

First museum of modern art opens Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France

Pablo Picasso paints Guernica for the Spanish Revolution

Great German Art Exhibition organised by Adolf Ziegler, Director of the Reich Chamber for Culture, Munich, Germany, under orders from Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister for Propaganda and Enlightenment, House of German Art, Munich, Germany,18 July. Comprising 900 works by German artists and aiming to represent “the perfect beauty of a race steeled in battle and sport, inspired not by antiquity or classicism, but by the pulsing life of our present day events.” (Hubert Wilm quoted in Adam, Peter, The Art of the Third Reich, Thames and Hudson, London, England, 1992, pg 35). Exhibition attended by 600,000 visitors and the first of eight annual stagings, 1937-1944.

Exhibition of Entartete Kunst (Degenerative Art) Institute of Archaeology, Hofgarten, Munich, Germany,19 July-30 November. Staged as counterpoint to the concurrent Great German Art Exhibition. Comprising 740 works exhibited as examples of abstract, expressionistic painting seen to "insult German feeling”. Included artists such as Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, Wassily Kandinsky, Max Beckman, Emil Nolde and George Grosz. Exhibition attended by 2,009,899 visitors.

French war film La Grande Illusion released, directed by Jean Renoir, Austria, 8 June

1938

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

Entartete Kunst exhibition travels to Berlin, Germany, February

Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) also known as November Pogrom, throughout Nazi Germany, 9-10 November


Passing of New Zealand Social Security Act

1939

Marriage of Marjorie Reeves (nee Scales) and Hugh St George Hamersley, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England. Hugh is the son of Isabella Maud and Alfred St George Hamersley.

Marriage of Patience Reeves and Harry Westacott, St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral, Malta, 21 April

Wedding reception for Patience (nee Reeves) and Harry Westacott, aboard HMS Shropshire, 29 April 1939
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

Flora Scales in St Tropez, France for the summer is visited by Marjorie and Hugh St George Hamersley, who stay at Hôtel Sube, April

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, Sydney, Australia

First transatlantic commercial air service New York, USA to Marseille, France, 28 June, New York to Southampton, USA, 8 July

Paris Métro completed, France

Arrival of Maria Hofmann in USA, 26 August

Following German invasion of Poland, the Second World War is declared by Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister, London, England, 3 September

Ernst Anton Plischke and wife Anna arrive in New Zealand

Spanish Civil War ends, Franco recognised by Britain, France, USA

New Zealand Centennial Exhibition, Wellington, 8 November 1939 - 4 May 1940

Exceptionally severe winter in France, 1939- 1940

1940

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

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

Flora Scales arrested by French police, 7 December. According to notes in her sister Marjorie's scrapbook, Scales had been planning to go to Portugal at this time. Her arrest is noted in the Evening Post, 5 November 1941: “’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, recalled 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.”

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: “It [the camp at Besançon] 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. 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

German Army occupies Paris, France, 14 June

New Zealand Women’s War Service Auxiliary formed

Evacuation of British Allied Forces from Dunkirk, France

Film The Great Dictator released, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin, New York, USA, 15 October

1941

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

New Zealand Women’s Auxiliary Airforce formed

Marriage of Marjorie Mappin and Theo de Lange, Church of St Mark, Remuera, Auckland, New Zealand, 15 November

1942

Flora Scales leaves Vittel, France, after being imprisoned 22 months and three days, 9 October. Early in 1942 the Germans began to implement their policy of releasing women over 60 years of age. Flora Scales was 55 when she left Vittel. Her release is noted in the Evening Post, 10 June 1943: “‘Artist in Paris: Allowed to leave camp’, Friends of the artist Miss Flora Scales will be glad to know that she has been allowed to leave the internment camp Vittel Vosges and is now living in Paris, near her friends a Russian family [the Kalachnikoff’s] who were refugees from the last war.”

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.

Yvonne Peyron (née Cotterell, 1913-2009), Triel Sur Seine, and her father, Edward Cotterell (born 1883), Triel Sur Seine, majority shareholders of Wheatley’s & Co., shipping and transport firm are declared enemy aliens, and Wheatley’s & Co., Paris, France, at 32 Rue Caumartin, is placed under the direction of a German administrator, Hans Gechter, by the Occupation Government of France, January-February 1942

Large quantity of plundered “degenerate” art burned in the gardens of the Galerie Nationale Jeu de Paume, Paris, France

New Zealand Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRENS) formed

New Zealand Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps formed

First contingent of US Marines arrive in New Zealand

1943

Postcard from internee at Frontstalag 194, addressed to Flora Scales at 1 rue Joseph Bara, 6ème, Paris, France, just a few doors away from Académie Ranson at 7 rue Joseph Bara, which remained open during the war for a few students

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

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

Birth of Gretchen Albrecht, Auckland, New Zealand, 7 May

Eleanor Roosevelt visits New Zealand to meet American forces based in the country, inspect the work of the Red Cross and study the contribution of New Zealand women to the war effort, 27 August

Letter from “Der Leiter des Abtransportes” ("director of removals”), to the Militärbsfehlshaber in Frankreich (Occupation Government of France), regarding the notification and seizure of enemy owned (Jewish) property being held at Wheatley’s & Co., 32 Rue Caumartin, Paris, France, 7 August. The sender address on this document is the headquarters of the Militärbsfehlshaber in Frankreich, 16, Avenue Kléber, Paris 75116, the address of the Hotel Majestic (now The Peninsula Paris).
Photo: Courtesy Archives National, Paris, France

1944

Flora Scales receives postcard from Vittel internee, addressed to rue bis du Maine, 14ème, Paris, France

Death of Lt. Cdr. Harry Westacott at sea, HMS Trollope (K575) torpedoed off Cap d’Antifer, France, 6 July

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 is one of the first English citizens to be flown out of Paris, France, after liberation, 25 August. She goes to her sister Marjorie and Hugh St George Hamersley, at Camberley, Surrey, England. Her mother Gertrude Scales and recently widowed niece, Patience Westacott, and her two children, Diana and Piers, are also living here. She carries potatoes and salt for the family, believing their deprivation to have been greater than hers.

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

Marjorie and Hugh St George Hamersley return to New Zealand with Patience Westacott’s two children, Diana and Piers

Hans Hofmann solo exhibition, Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery-museum, Art of This Century, New York, USA, 7 March - 8 April. Hofmann’s first solo exhibition in New York.

Women’s Suffrage, France, July

Liberation of Paris, France, 19-25 August

High ranking German officers arrested and temporarily held at the Hotel Majestic (their occupation headquarters during WWII), Paris, France, 26 August

German officers captured by Free French troops are lodged in the Hotel Majestic, Paris, France, 26 August
Photo: Courtesy https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/German_officer_POWs_in_Paris_HD-SN-99-02952.JPG

1945

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

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.

1946

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

Winter 1946-1947 very cold in England, temperatures recorded as low as -21°C

Ernst Plischke helps found the Architectural Centre, Wellington, New Zealand

New Zealand Universal Family Benefit introduced, 1 April

1947

Death of Stanhope Alexander Forbes, Newlyn, England, 2 March

Death of Frances Hodgkins, Dorchester, England, 13 May

Death of Margaret Mary Butler, Wellington, New Zealand, 4 December

1948

Death of Gertrude Maynard Scales (nee 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]

Ernst Plischke designs Khandallah Methodist Community Centre, Wellington, New Zealand

1949

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”.

Helen Hitchings Gallery opens, Bond Street, Wellington, New Zealand’s first modernist dealer gallery exhibiting modernist art and applied arts

World Peace Congress, Paris, France. Picasso unveils a drawing of a dove which becomes a universal symbol of peace and world communism.

1950

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

Burgeoning of St Ives School artists, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Terry Frost, Patrick Heron, Roger Hilton, Peter Lanyon, Bryan Wynter and Bernard Leach, England

1951

New Zealand waterfront strike

Helen Hitchings Gallery closes, Wellington, New Zealand

First meeting of the Maori Women’s Welfare League, New Zealand, September

Ernst Plischke designs Massey House, Wellington, New Zealand, 1951-1952

1953

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.

Architectural Centre Gallery opens, Lambton Quay, Wellington, New Zealand

Ernst Plischke designs the Sutch house, Wellington, New Zealand

1954

Flora Scales acquires and keeps a catalogue for Picasso's exhibition, Œuvre de 1900 à 1914, at Maison de la Pensée Française, 2, rue de L'Elysée, Paris VIII, France [see Untitled [Loose Leaf Pages] [BC112]]. It is assumed Scales visited the exhibition between 9 June and 28 September.

Picasso exhibition, Œuvre de 1900 à 1914, Maison de la Pensée Française, 2, rue de L'Elysée, Paris VIII, France, 9 June - 28 September

Picasso exhibition catalogue cover, Œuvre de 1900 à 1914, Maison de la Pensée Française, 2, rue de L'Elysée, Paris VIII, France

1955

Death of Isabella Maud Hamersley (nee Snow), New Zealand, 27 January

Jan Darna establishes his workshop in L’Hay- les-Roses, a suburb 11km south of Paris, in the Val de Marne, 20km from Bry-sur-Marne, France

1957

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.

Gabriele Münther donates significant parts of her collection of Kandinsky's works to the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany

1958

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

British Abstract Painting Exhibition rejected by National Art Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand, accepted by the Architectural Centre Gallery, affirming its role as Wellington’s foremost modernist public gallery

1959

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.

1960

Death of Hugh St George Hamersley, New Zealand

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.

New Zealand introduces television broadcasting

An all-white All Blacks team leave for South Africa

New Zealand introduces the contraceptive pill

J. F. Kennedy elected President of the USA

Picasso solo exhibition, Tate Gallery, London, England, 6 July - 19 September. Curated by Roland Penrose. The exhibition is the most extensive retrospective of Pablo Picasso's work assembled to date and is hailed as the exhibition that popularised Modern Art in Britain with more than half a million visitors.

1962

Flora Scales returns, probably briefly, to New Zealand

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

Publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

Publication of Far-away Hills: a meditation on New Zealand landscape by Toss Woollaston, Art Gallery Associates, Auckland, 1962. Woollaston’s 1960 lecture for the Friends of the Auckland City Art Gallery.

1963

Death of E. D. Kinzinger, North Carolina, USA, 18 April

Death of Maria Hofmann, Truro, Massachusetts, USA, 19 April

J. F. Kennedy assassinated, Lyndon B Johnson sworn in as President of the USA

Martin Luther King delivers his “I have a dream ... ” speech in which he calls for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the USA, 28 August

1964

Death of Roger Bissiѐre, Marminiac, France, 2 December

“With his disappearance, a whole chapter of Modernism, one that we could call the “Primitive Paradigm,” came to a close. The end of the primitive model in Modern art also signaled the emergence of what would later be called the Postmodern. While, in the typical Modernist tradition, Bissière struggled to be ‘primitive,’ that is, to see with an innocent eye, the new business model — so to speak — would be that of artists as intellectuals, entrepreneurs, technological wizards, or any combination of the above. Second-degree meta-discourses and irony would soon replace first-degree sincerity, which after the ‘60s, was seen as mere empty posturing…What interested Bissière in the primitive side of art was not the exoticism of the art from distant lands and the radical formal solutions they offered Modern artists, but rather the stoic sincerity of the anonymous Romanesque fresco painter.” – ‘Roger Bissière, The Last “Primitive”’ by Gwenaël Kerlidou, https://hyperallergic.com/370533/roger-bissiere-the-last-primitive/, 2017

1965

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

Death of John Weeks, Auckland, New Zealand, 10 December

1966

Death of Hans Hofmann, New York, USA, 17 February

1967

New Zealand Decimal Currency Act effective, 10 July

1968

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

Martin Luther King assassinated, 4 April

Robert Kennedy assassinated, 6 June

Richard Nixon elected President of the USA

1969

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon, 20 July

1970

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]

Flora Scales’s address recorded as 203 Victoria Park Road, London E9, England

Death of Edward Herbert Athol Scales, New Zealand, May

Anti-abortion campaign, Auckland, New Zealand

Women’s Liberation Front hold meetings in Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand

1971

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]]

National Women’s Liberation Conference, Wellington, New Zealand

Britain changes from Imperial to Decimal currency, 15 February

1972

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.

Colin McCahon: a survey exhibition, Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand

1973

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

Death of Helen Constance Hamersley, England

Death of Sydney Lough Thompson, Concarneau, France, 8 June

New Zealand Domestic Purposes Benefit introduced

1974

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

Death of Gwendoline Knight, New Zealand

Death of Jan Darna, L’Hay-les-Roses, France

Toss Woollaston retrospective exhibition, Dunedin Art Gallery, New Zealand, April

Toss Woollaston stays with Rodney Kennedy, New Zealand, May and October

First New Zealand Women’s Refuge opens, Christchurch, New Zealand

1975

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

Marriage of Ellen Patience Evers-Swindell (nee Reeves, formerly Westacott) and Patrick Stanley Tennent, St Mark’s Church, Havelock North, New Zealand, 19 April

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 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

International Women’s Year

Working Women’s Council established, New Zealand

New Zealand Matrimonial Property Act introducing equal sharing of assets in a marriage

1976

Helen F. V. Scales exhibition tours to
*Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, 5 March - 15 April
*The Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua, Whanganui, 17 May - 7 June
*Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington, 5 July - 19 July

Reviews of the exhibition are weighted with biographical information and labour Flora Scales’s influence on Toss Woollaston 42 years earlier. The tone is frequently patronising, with belittling terms such as “appealing”, and “charming in an unimportant sort of way”, used by the five male reviewers, who, all bar one, mention her age.

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

Peter McLeavey Gallery describes the pricing system for the exhibition on gallery letterhead, Helen F.V. Scales, which began at the Auckland City Art Gallery in 1975, 9 June. The details are transcribed from a letter from Colin McCahon to Peter McLeavey, “Her prices $300 for anything with one dimension 300cms. All under that $100. I understand that the marked catalogue has gone missing. I’ll do another one once I’ve checked with Gordon H B [Gordon H. Brown]. But those are the prices.” In a letter from McLeavey to John Maynard, Auckland City Art Gallery, 16 July 1976, he describes selling works for $150 and $300.

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

Peter McLeavey Gallery returns 25 paintings to Flora Scales from Wellington to Auckland at the conclusion of the exhibition, Helen F.V. Scales, which began at Auckland City Art Gallery in 1975, 20 July. McLeavey marked a master catalogue from the Auckland City Art Gallery exhibition, Helen F.V. Scales, 1975, with “R” to indicate to be returned to the artist.

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

16th 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

Gretchen Albrecht visits Flora Scales at 38 Brentwood Avenue, Mt Eden, Auckland, New Zealand, having seen her solo exhibition at the Auckland City Art Gallery

Patricia France visits Flora Scales at 38 Brentwood Avenue, Mt Eden, Auckland, New Zealand

Flora Scales leaves New Zealand to fly to France, late 1976

Letter to Flora Scales from Boris Kalachnikoff, saying her arrival in France is keenly anticipated, dated 9 September

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

United Nations Decade for Women 1976- 1985 established

1977

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 lifes 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 [Untitled [Three Trees] [BC089]]. She also paints the lemon tree that grew in the back garden [Untitled [Lemon Tree] [BC086]].

1978

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 26th 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

1979

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

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
11th 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

Women’s Art Archives established, National Art Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand

1980

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.

Women’s Art Gallery established, Wellington, New Zealand

1981

Death of Garry Owen Evers- Swindell, New Zealand

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

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

Springbok Tour, Women Against the Tour oppose racist rugby in New Zealand

New Zealand women support Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, Berkshire, England, September

Alison Roe elected ‘Sportsman of the Year’

1982

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

1983

Death of Helen Marie Stewart, New Zealand, 31 March

1984

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

Death of Vyclav Vytlacil, Sparkhill, New York, USA

1985

Death of Flora Scales at Rotorua Hospital, New Zealand, 11 January

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.

1986

Patience Tennent donates Flora Scales's easel, palette and smock to Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand (reg.no. CA000215/001/0001)

Gretchen Albrecht donates Scales’s paint box, brushes and paints to Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand (reg. no. CA000215/001/0002).

Flora Scales’s paint box, donated in 1986 to Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand by Gretchen Albrecht
Photo: Courtesy A. de Lange, 2019

There are 11 tubes of oil paint included the colours are as follows:

WN Artists’ Oil Colour Cadmium Red 219 SL
WN Artists’ Oil Colour Yellow Ochre 136 SL
WN Artists’ Oil Colour Viridian 211 SL
WN Artists’ Oil Colour Flake White N0. 2 SL
WN Artists’ Oil Colour Light Red 120 SL
WN Artists’ Oil Colour Ultramarine Deep 133 SL
WN Artists’ Oil Colour Lemon Yellow Deep 207 SL
WN Artists’ Oil Colour Burnt Sienna 103SL
WN Artists’ Oil Colour Cadmium Yellow Deep 127 SL
WN Artists’ Oil Colour Yellow Ochre 136 SL
WN Winton Oil Colour Vermillion 42

Details courtesy Jennifer Twist, Archivist, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand

1987

Death of Colin John McCahon, Auckland, New Zealand, 27 May

1988

Death of May Ann Smith, Coromandel, New Zealand, 24 July

Edmund Daniel Kinzinger exhibition, Reuchlinhaus Pforzheim, Germany, 15 October - 27 November. A centenary exhibition mounted by the city of Pforzheim and the Galerie Joseph Fach, Frankfurt, Germany.

1989

Flora Scales exhibits in A Community of Women: Works by New Zealand Women Artists 1900 - 1989, National Art Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand, 1 July

Death of Rodney Kennedy, Dunedin, New Zealand, 14 October

1990

Flora Scales exhibits in Little Landscapes, The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, Wellington, 5 May

1991

‘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.

1992

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

Death of Ernst Anton Plischke, Austria, 23 May

Professor Philip Van Keuren curates Edmund D. Kinzinger: The Early Years 1913-1935, The Gallery, Hughes-Trigg Student Center, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, USA, 16 August - 20 September. It is the first major exhibition of early drawings by E.D. Kinzinger in the US. Van Keuren writes: “The undeniable abstract power of perception found in Kinzinger's early works is directly linked to the new emphasis on the spiritual taking place in Europe in the late 19th and very early 20th century. As European artists sought to unite abstraction with mystical concepts to create meaningful images they looked to the study of Theosophy for a guide to the expression of ideas that had previously seemed inexpressible. Theosophy, a philosophy based on mystical insight into the nature of God, began to be linked with a search for a way to transform society and with a reaction against materialism and industrialism dominating late 19th century Germany. For many artists of this period, Kinzinger included, the path to this transformation led away from representational art and towards abstraction. For a brief period this move fell within a particularly German tradition of what might be referred to as visionary representational art…

After World War One the release of energies and feelings into an art imbued with deep mystical and spiritual connotations began to be criticized as being decorative and without meaning. The liberating moment in which German expressionism flourished seemed gone after the war. Artists searching to transform society became more enamored with technology and less with the mystical needs that had fostered the growth of German expressionism.

Kinzinger was not immune to these societal changes, and his work now began to take on a more analytical cubist look in which surface and spatial movements create the critical balance between content and form. His work closely resembles that of his contemporaries except for the mystical moodiness that seems to lay just under the surface of even the most non-objective works from this period. Their poetic mood springs less from his use of saturated, luminous colors and evocative forms and more from some undeniable power of perception drawn from his sense of the deep mystery of life. This mystic moodiness has its roots in personal inspirations. In this, Kinzinger drew upon German landscape painting traditions that existed before 1900.” – Excerpt from Edmund D. Kinzinger: The Early Years 1913-1935 by Professor Philip Van Keuren, exhibition catalogue, The Gallery, Hughes-Trigg Student Center, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, USA, 16 August - 20 September 1992, also published in Edmund Kinzinger, Cubist and Other Works: 1910-50 exhibition catalogue, The Art Center, Waco, Texas, USA, 5 December 1992 - 14 February 1993

Edmund D. Kinzinger: The Early Years 1913-1935 exhibition catalogue (cover), The Gallery, Hughes-Trigg Student Center, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, USA, 16 August - 20 September 1992

Professor Philip Van Keuren curates Edmund Kinzinger, Cubist and Other Works: 1910-50, The Art Center, Waco, Texas, USA, 5 December - 14 February 1993

1993

Flora Scales exhibits in Changing Landscapes 1983-1993: Women Artists from the Sarjeant Gallery Collection, The Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui, New Zealand, 12 July. Exhibition commemorating the centenary of women's suffrage in New Zealand.

Flora Scales exhibits in Academy Women: A Century of Inspiration, An Exhibition Celebrating 100 Years of Women's Art in New Zealand, New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts Galleries, Wellington, New Zealand, 25 September

1994

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/

1995

Death of Patricia France, Dunedin, New Zealand, 8 March

1997

Flora Scales exhibits in Going All Modern, The Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui, New Zealand, 5 July

Flora Scales exhibition in From the Thames to the Nile, Hocken Collections - Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago Library, Dunedin, New Zealand, 19 July

1998

Death of Sir Mountford Tosswill (Toss) Woollaston, Upper Moutere, New Zealand, 30 August

1999

Flora Scales exhibits in From Time to Time, The Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui, New Zealand, October

Flora Scales exhibits in ARTNotes: 20th century artists' papers and sketches from the Turnbull Library, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Turnbull Room, Wellington, 27 November

Flora Scales exhibits in The Promised Land: Art in Nelson from Tasman to Today, The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatū, Nelson, New Zealand, 19 December

2000

Flora Scales exhibits in Present for the Future, The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, New Zealand, 11 November

2001

Flora Scales exhibits in Kindred Spirits: Wanganui Arts Society Centenary, The Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui, New Zealand, 1 July

2004

Flora Scales exhibits in Art and Up, Te Manawa, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 1 May

Flora Scales exhibits in Early New Zealand and European Exhibition, Lewis-Paape Gallery, Lower Hutt, New Zealand, 19 September

Professor Tony Green writes in his 2003 lecture Toss Woollaston: Origins and Influence: “There were many earnest seekers after artistic learning filling the art schools of Paris and other European cities between the two World Wars…At least three New Zealanders, unmarried women in their forties, were doing the rounds of the schools in the 1920s, Gwen Knight, Helen Stewart and Helen Flora Scales. They like the other students tended to move from school to school in a perpetual search for artistic enlightenment, though for the most part their status as ‘artists’ or as ‘accomplished amateurs’ and ‘perpetual students’ seems not to have been altogether clear to them.” And then later: “Scales’ information was only important for Woollaston for a short time in the 1930s, the time when he was seeking some certainty in modernist method. It would be a mistake to attempt to trace its influence throughout his whole career, because it was not an important set of principles that he adopted. It was of only limited and temporary use to him. He was a far more committed artist than those who usually consumed such art school methods. He could never be considered a perpetual student, an amateur or a hobbyist.” – Toss Woollaston: Origins and Influence by Tony Green, Gordon H. Brown Lecture Series 02, Victoria University Press, Wellington, New Zealand, 2004, pg 25, 32

Death of Dame Janet Paul, Wellington, New Zealand, 28 July

2005

Death of Theo de Lange, Lake Rotoiti, Rotorua, New Zealand, 4 July

Death of John Drawbridge, Wellington, New Zealand, 24 July

2006

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

Death of Patrick Stanley Tennent, New Zealand, 2 May

2007

Flora Scales exhibits in Canon: Celebrating Nelson's Art History, The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatū, Nelson, New Zealand, 30 March

2008

Death of Ellen Patience Tennent (nee Reeves, formerly Westacott, formerly Evers-Swindell), Havelock North, New Zealand, 19 May

2013

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

2014

Flora Scales exhibits in Reverie: Contemplative Paintings from the Collection, The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, New Zealand, 5 July

Death of Marjorie de Lange, Lake Rotoiti, Rotorua, New Zealand, 31 March

2015

Death of Diana Mills (nee Westacott, formerly Zaharopoulos), Havelock North, New Zealand, 4 May

2017

Flora Scales exhibits in The Cornish Connection, The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatū, Nelson, New Zealand, 11 December

2018

Flora Scales exhibits in Another Facet, The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatū, Nelson, New Zealand, 19 June

Flora Scales exhibits in Flora Scales, The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatū, Nelson, New Zealand, 16 November

2019

Flora Scales exhibits in The scene in which I find myself / Or, where does my body belong: 50 years of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery Collection, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand, 7 December

Boris and Christiane Kalachnikoff exhibit work together at BioHorizon Space, Bry-sur-Marne, France, 9 December 2019 – 9 January 2020

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

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

2020

Flora Scales exhibits in Frances Hodgkins and Her Circle, Jonathan Grant Galleries, Auckland, New Zealand, 12 November

US President Donald Trump issues an executive order stating that art commissioned by the Art in Architecture program should depict "historically significant Americans or events of American historical significance or illustrate the ideals upon which our Nation was founded." The order added that any statue or work of art " shall be a lifelike or realistic representation of that person, not an abstract or modernist representation." (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/07/08/2020-14872/building-and-rebuilding-monuments-to-american-heroes)

2021

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

US President Joe Biden revokes President Donald Trump's executive order dictating what kind of art can be commissioned for federal buildings to ensure American "public spaces reflect the rich diversity and creativity that strengthens and inspires them." (https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/31/politics/biden-admin-reversing-trump-rule-public-art/index.html)

2022

Flora Scales exhibits in arTVox, The Urban Art Foundation, Parliament TV, 15 April

Antonia Bartoli, curator of Provenance Research, Yale University Art Gallery, New York, USA, is recommended to Barbi and Angus de Lange [Co-directors of florascales.com] by Christopher A. Marinello, Esq., CEO & Founder, Art Recovery International, LLC, UK. Bartoli is engaged to undertake research towards artworks by Flora Scales stolen from Paris, France, in the early 1940s. She identifies a letter from “Der Leiter des Abtransportes” ("director of removals”), to the Militärbsfehlshaber in Frankreich (Occupation Government of France), regarding the notification and seizure of enemy owned (Jewish) property being held at Wheatley’s & Co., 32 Rue Caumartin, Paris, France, 7 August. Flora Scales had artworks stored in the Wheatley’s & Co. warehouse at this time.

Death of Christiane Kalachnikoff, Bry-sur-Marne, France, 2 October

2023

Flora Scales exhibits in Unhinged: Opening the Door to the Dowse Collection, The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, New Zealand, 25 March

Flora Scales exhibits in The Women of Pumpkin Cottage, Whirinaki Whare Taonga, Upper Hutt, New Zealand, 17 June