Provenance:
Private Collection, Auckland Private Collection, Bay of Plenty Purchased by the above collection from Modern, Contemporary & Collectable Art International Art Centre, December, 2011 Exhibited: Flora Scales Retrospective Suter Gallery, Nelson, 17 November 2018 27 January 2019 Helen Flora Scales was born in Lower Hutt 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. Her papers and paintings are held at the Alexander Turnbull Library.