Sir Terry Frost, R.A.

Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London, whence purchased by the present owner

Original canvas. There are some scattered spots of surface dirt to the black form in the bottom half of the composition and a tiny spot of paint loss to one of the stripes of mustard impasto in the centre as well as a fine line of surface craquelure through these stripes of impasto in the centre otherwise in good overall condition. Under ultraviolet light, there are some light lines of sensitive retouching to a long line of surface craquelure running down the left edge, a further area by the centre of the right edge and a fine line running vertically down the black form in the bottom half of the composition. Held in a wood frame under glass; unexamined out of frame. The colours are slightly fresher than the illustration suggests.
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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, and 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, and in the paintings of 1959 and 1960, the reduction of the palette made the paintings a powerful vehicle for Frost's undoubted compositional skills.