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Lot Essay
On the recommendation of Adrian Heath, Terry Frost enrolled at the Camberwell School of Art in 1947. Under the very formal, constructive training of Sir William Coldstream, Frost met Victor Pasmore who was teaching part time at Camberwell. On showing Pasmore his work he suggested that Frost stopped coming to the formal classes and 'go round the National Gallery, go round the modern galleries' (see David Lewis, Terry Frost, Yale and London, 1994, p. 40). Although he took Pasmore's advice he continued to attend figure-drawing classes as he was still painting orthodox landscapes at this time.
It was not until 1949 that Frost painted his first abstract and then in the early 1950s he embarked on A Walk Along the Quay series which was inspired by the daily walks around St Ives harbour that he would take with his son Adrian. Frost commented that 'the subject matter is in fact the sensation evoked by the movements and colour in the harbour' (see Margaret Garlake, New Art New World, Yale and London, 1998, p. 118). This inspiration, based on the physical, was extended to the actual dimensions of the works themselves in which he replicates the constricted path along the quayside, however it is his comment in the exhibition catalogue for Statements. A Review of British Abstract Art in 1956, ICA, London, that we really get a true feeling of Frost's key determinants, 'I combine a sense of disciplined growth with the free discoveries made in the actual process of painting' (Ibid p. 120). The strict, formalised construction of the picture, that Frost was taught at Camberwell, and witnessed in Pasmore's collages of 1949, underpins his very free, emotive journeys through the landscape, as seen in the present work.
It was not until 1949 that Frost painted his first abstract and then in the early 1950s he embarked on A Walk Along the Quay series which was inspired by the daily walks around St Ives harbour that he would take with his son Adrian. Frost commented that 'the subject matter is in fact the sensation evoked by the movements and colour in the harbour' (see Margaret Garlake, New Art New World, Yale and London, 1998, p. 118). This inspiration, based on the physical, was extended to the actual dimensions of the works themselves in which he replicates the constricted path along the quayside, however it is his comment in the exhibition catalogue for Statements. A Review of British Abstract Art in 1956, ICA, London, that we really get a true feeling of Frost's key determinants, 'I combine a sense of disciplined growth with the free discoveries made in the actual process of painting' (Ibid p. 120). The strict, formalised construction of the picture, that Frost was taught at Camberwell, and witnessed in Pasmore's collages of 1949, underpins his very free, emotive journeys through the landscape, as seen in the present work.