Sir Terry Frost R.A.

(British, 1915-2003)

Newlyn Rhythms 232 x 308 cm. (91 1/4 x 121 1/4 in.) (including the backboards); approximately 55.9 x 55.9 cm. (22 x 22 in.) (each canvas)

Footnotes

Provenance
The Artist
Private Collection, U.K.

Exhibited
Truro, County Hall (on loan)

Literature
Elizabeth Knowles (ed.), Terry Frost, Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2000, p.131 (col.ill., where dated 1981-88)

Terry Frost moved to Newlyn in 1974 with the help of a number of his artistic friends who already lived in Cornwall, and the move signalled a refreshing change for his artwork. While Frost was still living in Banbury, he used to visit Cornwall every so often, staying with Bryan and Monica Wynter. In time Bryan Wynter and Denis Mitchell began to look for a house for Frost to move to, ideally in Newlyn instead of St Ives as the artistic community there had changed so much in the last few years, with Ben Nicholson having moved to Switzerland, Sven Berlin and Guido Morris leaving, and Barns-Graham spending half the year in Scotland. Soon, a house was found in Newlyn at the top of Tredavoe Lane, and Frost's friends stepped in to help again with securing the purchase of the house: lacking ready money for a deposit, John Hoskin and Adrian Heath stepped in with cheques for £5,000 each, with Frost able to pay back their generosity once his own house in Banbury had been sold shortly after.

The move to Newlyn was a welcome return back to Cornwall for Frost, and indeed he was surrounded there by a close artistic community again. John Wells and Denis Mitchell both had studios in Trewarveneth Street in Newlyn, Sheila Lanyon was to move to Newlyn shortly after the Frosts arrived, the Wynters lived at St Buryan, a few miles outside Newlyn, while W. S. Graham lived in Madron, which was also close by.

Newlyn Rhythms is a joyous and ambitious piece, executed on twenty canvases, giving free reign to the delight in colour and shape that occupied Frost's later years. Organised in a chequered format, the alternating canvases have bright and paler colour schemes, but all share the compositional motif of a central diamond with semicircles which shift around its edges, creating the sense of movement which is akin to a beat or the rhythm referred to in the title.