108. Flora Scales
A Days Work
Oil on board
41 x 63 cm
Signed. Inscribed on original label affixed verso
est. $4,000 - 6,000
Fetched $6,500
Relative Size: A Days Work
Relative size

Helen Flora Victoria Scales was born in Lower Hutt on 24 May 1887. She attended the Canterbury College School of Art and exhibited at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1906. In 1908 Scales left for England to attend Calderon's School of Animal Painting. A work from this period, Cattle Mustering in New Zealand was hung at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1911.

Returning to New Zealand Scales joined the Academy Studio Club in 1914. By 1928 the artist was studying in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and then Munich's Hans Hofmann School of Art where she was introduced Hofmann's principles of modernism. On her return to New Zealand in 1934 she passed on these principals to Toss Woollaston. Apart from Woollaston, W. H. Allen and Frederick Page, few in New Zealand understood the modernism featured in her work.

In late 1935 Scales returned to paint in England and France. She attended lectures at the Académie Ranson and in 1959 the Heatherley School of Fine Art. During World War II she was interned for two years in France.

In 1972 Flora Scales resettled in New Zealand, in 1975 a solo exhibition was arranged by Colin McCahon at the Auckland City Art Gallery. Scales died in 1985. Most of her work is in private ownership in New Zealand, her papers and paintings are held at the Alexander Turnbull Library.

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