Terry Frost
Learned to paint in a prisoner-of-war camp, and spent the rest of his life on boats, harbours and half-circles.
Terry Frost was born in Leamington Spa in 1915, worked in a bicycle factory, and began painting seriously as a prisoner of war at Stalag 383, where a fellow prisoner taught him. He came to St Ives in 1946, worked as an assistant to Barbara Hepworth, and became one of the central figures of the post-war St Ives generation alongside Heron, Lanyon and Wynter. The abstract vocabulary is traceable to the harbour: boats rocking in Newlyn produced the black and white half-circles and wedges, and the later work moved into flat, singing reds, blacks and yellows. He was knighted in 1998 and died in 2003.
The 1950s and early 1960s canvases are the top of the market, and the collage and mixed-media works of that period are strong. Frost was enormously prolific across sixty years, particularly in screenprint and lithograph, and those editions are plentiful and modestly valued — mistaking one for a painting in reproduction is easy, since the imagery is identical. Works on paper in gouache and collage are numerous. He signed and dated on the reverse of canvases, which is where the useful information usually is.
If you own a work by Terry Frost
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.