Sir Terry Frost, R.A.

Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London, where acquired by the present owner in July 2004

Original canvas. There is some craquelure to the white section of paint in the lower right quadrant and a tiny fleck of paint loss along the lower right edge. There is a small area of paint separation in the brown rectangular block in the upper left quadrant. There is also a tiny abrasion along the centre of the lower edge and a tiny fleck of resultant paint loss. There are some marks of surface dirt in places across the canvas. Under ultraviolet light there appear to be no signs of retouching. Contained in a dark wood frame with a gilt border under glass; unexamined out of frame. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5381 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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The increasing simplification and openness of Frost's work in the late 1950s is perhaps a mark of the growing confidence that he had developed. With a widening international reputation and a contract with Waddington Galleries, he was developing an open and expansive manner that brought both acclaim and sales.

The simplification of the imagery of Frost's painting in this period can perhaps be related to a similar shift in the work of his close friend Roger Hilton. While Frost was in Leeds, the two had carried on a long correspondence debating the paths that their art could and should take. With Frost's return to St. Ives in 1957 and Hilton's increasingly frequent and lengthy stays from 1958 onwards, it was perhaps inevitable that correspondences should appear in their work. Both artists began to introduce references to the figure into their painting in 1958 and 1959, although Hilton's were increasingly overt. Frost however found, as he had in his work earlier in the decade, that he could devise a manner that both suggested figuration whilst still remaining ostensibly abstract. In the paintings of 1959 and 1960, the reduction of the palette made the paintings a powerful vehicle for Frost's undoubted compositional skills.