Long Green, Blue, White: August 1954 is a major example by Terry Frost that appears from a long-held private collection.

Painted in 1954, it belongs to a key period of his career when he developed his distinctive form of abstraction – a personal response to the external world balanced by theoretical principles. Significant comparables include Green, Black and White Movement, 1951 (Tate Collection) and his celebrated ‘Walk Along the Quay’ series. As Frost himself explained of these works:

“…I had been walking along the quay every morning…it was quite a simple experience. I just happened to notice that the boats were there with a different colour on when the tide was out and they were all propped up and there I saw all those semi-circles propped up on a stick…the strange feeling of looking on top of boats at high tide and the same boats tied up and resting…when the tide’s out. The size of canvas was suggested to me by one I happened to have. It had to conform to my idea, the walk, so it was long, like the quay (the pier past Smeaton’s Lighthouse) and narrow…in fact I just walked up the canvas in paint” (the artist, transcript of conversation with Adrian Heath and John Hoskin, July 1987).

When we look at the present work therefore, we see how the crescent moon shapes reference boats in movement, the lines a suggestion of moorings, the colour a sense of the sea and the elongated format itself a reference to a quay – inviting one to ‘walk’ along it. The thin, opaque quality of the surface appears in some other works of the period, which Frost explained first derived from attempting to correct some problems in the early stages of Green, Black and White Movement by scrubbing it in the bath. Patrick Heron praised this quality, and how it hinted at the limpidity of the shallow harbour waters. It also perhaps suggests the influence of Peter Lanyon, whose painterly freedom loosened Frost’s own approach, and who employed similar tonal colours in works such as St Just, 1953 (Tate Collection). Another version of the present work was sold at Sotheby’s, 13 Deember 2007, lot 88).