Composition

The composition of this piece is exemplary of Terry Frost's work in 1962-3. The half semi-circles started to appear in his work at this time, inspired by a drawing he made of his wife, 'I made a drawing of Kath from behind ... and there were these two semicircles of her buttocks coming in from the side of the paper with the crisscross of the lacing of her bathing suit, tied in a bow ... And then when I looked at those semicircular shapes in the drawing my mind went back to the boats' (quoted in C. Stephens, Terry Frost, London, 2000, p. 52). Frost developed this imagery in relation to his wife's figure and clothing in subsequent paintings, for example in Stays, 1962 (Tate, London). Here, he developed the idea further by drawing laces between the semi-circles, as if to tie together the two halves of the swimming costume and in some paintings, went even further and used actual laces. The suggestion of the shape of boats that the semi-circles provoke is an interesting reference to his abstract depiction of boats in St Ives that can be seen in earlier works from the 1950s.