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Lot Essay
The artist has dated the present work to circa 1956-57 when the flat-sided polygonal shape, so clearly the focus of the present painting, was, along with vertical 'stripes', a prevalent feature.
The artist discusses a comparable painting, Red, Black and White 1956 (private collection) as 'the result of the true experience of Black and White in Yorkshire' which was painted when Frost was teaching at Leeds School of Art. Frost explains, 'I drove through the snow and had lunch with Herbert Read at Stonegrave. After lunch we went for a walk. Herbert lent me wellingtons and we struggled through the snow, so deep it came over the tops of the wellingtons; the angle of the hill seemed about 45 degrees and we had to walk to counter the slope. It was a clear bright day and I looked up and saw the white sun spinning on the top of a copse. Afterwards and now, I recall that I saw a naples yellow blinding circle spinning on top of black verticals. The sensation was true. I was spellbound and, of course, when I tried to look again 'it' had gone, just a sun and a copse on the brow of a hill covered in snow.
I do remember my heart almost stopped at the experience and it was gone. So I came back and I painted Red, Black and White 1956. I didn't come back and just paint the picture. I never was able to do that. I never wished to do that. I always have to absorb the moments and let them go for I have to make the idea, the discovery. Sometimes I go for a couple of years before I can get clean as it were and discover the moment again in paint' (see Terry Frost Paintings, drawings and collages, catalogue for the Arts Council exhibition, 1977, pp. 14-15).
The artist discusses a comparable painting, Red, Black and White 1956 (private collection) as 'the result of the true experience of Black and White in Yorkshire' which was painted when Frost was teaching at Leeds School of Art. Frost explains, 'I drove through the snow and had lunch with Herbert Read at Stonegrave. After lunch we went for a walk. Herbert lent me wellingtons and we struggled through the snow, so deep it came over the tops of the wellingtons; the angle of the hill seemed about 45 degrees and we had to walk to counter the slope. It was a clear bright day and I looked up and saw the white sun spinning on the top of a copse. Afterwards and now, I recall that I saw a naples yellow blinding circle spinning on top of black verticals. The sensation was true. I was spellbound and, of course, when I tried to look again 'it' had gone, just a sun and a copse on the brow of a hill covered in snow.
I do remember my heart almost stopped at the experience and it was gone. So I came back and I painted Red, Black and White 1956. I didn't come back and just paint the picture. I never was able to do that. I never wished to do that. I always have to absorb the moments and let them go for I have to make the idea, the discovery. Sometimes I go for a couple of years before I can get clean as it were and discover the moment again in paint' (see Terry Frost Paintings, drawings and collages, catalogue for the Arts Council exhibition, 1977, pp. 14-15).