British artist Terry Frost developed a fascination with Rubens' painting of “The Three Graces” while he was a student at Camberwell School of Art. The work was the source of inspiration for many works throughout his career, including a number of abstract works.
British artist Terry Frost developed a fascination with Rubens' painting of “The Three Graces” while he was a student at Camberwell School of Art. The work was the source of inspiration for many works throughout his career, including a number of abstract works.
His abstraction of the motif of the three figures is particularly evocative, the three figures reduced to three sections of horizontal and vertical lines. Works such as this situated Frost as one of the most avant-garde artists of the time.
The size of this work suggests it was a sketch or study for a major work. The artist’s 1959 work “Grey, Lemon & Blue (3 Graces)”, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, shows the use of similar colours as the current work.