Four Nudes with Two Herons signed and dated 1935 (lower left), oil on board 108 x 93cm (42.5in x 36.5in) Footnote: Born in Jersey in 1913, the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel John Dymoke Scale, she married in Cairo Cathedral Brigadier Rupert Norton Harding-Newman in November 1939, he was awarded an MC in 1942 and served in the Secret Intelligence Service. Scale attended Farnham School of Art where she was taught by Otway Maconnell FRSA RBA, later going onto Goldsmiths College where she was taught under the guidance of James Bateman RA. She studied Early Renaissance painting and was greatly influenced by the work and palette of Michelangelo, Botticelli, Piero della Francesca, as well as El Greco. Rowland Hilder taught her line drawing, but she was much more interested in producing large scale mythological and biblically based subjects, such as the work offered here, which provided Scale with much more scope for adventure and fantasy. Her large-scale compositions were initially worked up in sketchbooks, she would then produce a working watercolour or drawing which would be squared up ready to place onto the gesso prepared board. In 1933 at the age of nineteen she had her first painting exhibited at the Royal Academy and between 1933-38 Scale had seven paintings accepted and hung. Later in 1936 she was invited by the National Gallery of Canada to exhibit at an exhibition of Contemporary British artists such as George Spencer Watson, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Stanley Spencer amongst others. She also exhibited at the RBA and for many years with the Society of Women Artists. She later settled in Somerset and then Dorset after her husband retired. In 1995 Kathleen Muriel Harding-Newman as she was now known had a retrospective of her work held at the Dorset Museum in Dorchester. 'Artist’s Resale Rights (ARR) may apply to this lot'.