Red, Yellow and Blue

Three forms in a composition have been a recurring theme in Frost's work, since he studied Rubens's painting of The Three Graces in the National Gallery, when he was a student at Camberwell. There is a painting entitled The Three Graces, dating from the same year as the present composition, which is in the collection of Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery. Frost has explored the mysterious drama set up by three figures, three forms, first seen in the dynamics of Rubens's composition with glances and colours interacting across the canvas. For him, the idea of the three graces was allied to the idea of a sensuous figure of love, as in Gwennor, goddess of love, who appears out of the sea, drowning unwary fisherman (see D. Lewis, Terry Frost, Aldershot, 1996, p. 96).