Washed Vertical oil on canvas 116 x 86 cm. (45 2/3 x 34 in.) Painted circa 1956
Sold for
£16,250
inc. premium
Footnotes
PROVENANCE: With The Belgrave Gallery, London, where purchased by the present owners in March 2001
Frost's move from Cornwall to Yorkshire in 1954 engendered a change in the artist's style and palette, inspired by the landscape that surrounded Leeds. Dateable to circa 1956, Washed Vertical would have been painted at a time when Frost was a Gregory Fellow and enjoying independent artistic development in the Yorkshire Dales.
David Lewis notes the connection between paintings coming out of Frost's Leeds period and Yellow Day (1951-52, Private Collection), which conveys strong lines of yellow, black and red to create a representation of summer heat. Lewis goes on to state that 'in place of the rocking semicircles of the Cornwall period, attenuated rectangular panels or trapeziums, separated by black lines, predominate in the paintings of the Leeds period' (David Lewis et al, Terry Frost, Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2000, p.73). Washed Vertical displays these characteristics as the hot vertical colours defined within a contained space echo the artists abstracted interpretation of the region.