Terry Frost valuation
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.
What a work by Terry Frost is worth
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 is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
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Bio
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.
One name, two markets
The paintings of the Leeds and St Ives years and the screenprints of the last decade of his life share a signature and very little else. The early work is where the reputation was made and where the serious money in this market sits; the late print output is large, was published widely, and is what most people who write to us actually own. Both are genuine. They are not comparable, and a valuation that treats them as one thing will be wrong in one direction or the other.
For a print, the things that decide it are the publisher, the edition size, whether the signature and number are in pencil on the sheet, and whether the sheet has been trimmed to a frame. For a painting or a construction, it is the period, the support — he worked on board and on canvas, and used collage and relief elements — and whether the surface has been cleaned or retouched by anyone. Photograph the whole work square on, the edges, and the reverse, which on a painting of this date usually carries the most useful information on the whole object.
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.
