Derek Hirst

I was wandering through the Bond Street galleries of Bonham’s when I spotted an early, small Terry Frost - and its estimate price at auction. The auctioneers were expecting £25,000-£35,000 for this not especially brilliant 1958 work. I had heard elsewhere that Sir Terry was on a roll, a posthumous one, since he died in September 2003.

Terry Frost

Having learnt painting in the early 1940s from another prisoner of war, Adrian Heath, Frost became one of Britain’s leading abstract painters. Sir Terry could and did convey a wonderful sensation of the joy of life in his painting and his equally cheerful prints.

Frost’s lively and highly attractive output, sustained over a long career. gives would-be owners of his work a large field to explore. That’s the first necessity of a vigorous market: a large supply of work. Like much else in the economics of the art market, the results flatly contradict ‘normal’ marketing experience.

In general, the larger the supply of a commodity, the lower its prices. But art is not a commodity, and its prices don’t work that way. That’s why there’s no truth in the layman’s common belief that death sees the artist’s work accelerate in price. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.

Derek Hirst, Santiago de la Compostella No III, 2002

I doubt if the prices of Adrian Heath, Frost’s war-time mentor, have performed at all well. But then, Heath’s work was much less happy and much less popular in its appeal. And it’s appeal that drives up demand and thus the price - though it’s true that sometimes the posthumous interest in an artist, enhanced by the obituaries and retrospective shows, generates a wider and warmer appreciation.

That’s why I’ll be fascinated to see what happens to the prices of the wonderful artist Derek Hirst, who died on 17th May, aged 76, after a career which suffered from illness, but also from other factors.

Widely respected by his peers and the critics, Hirst’s work never became ‘popular’, partly, perhaps, because the nature of his paintings, drawings and prints - all of the highest class - seemed so varied. In fact, Hirst was pursuing the same themes in different ways, from his early door paintings to the Spanish townscapes that inspired his last works.

Picasso, Dora Maar With Cat, 1941

It’s even difficult to classify Hirst as a figurative rather than an abstract artist, or the other way round. Yet consistency can’t be that important for how do you explain Picasso? The superb painting of Dora Maar, which fetched $95 million recently, comes from only one of the master’s many transformations of style and content.

Picasso’s work is strongly figurative, of course, and Terry Frost’s painting, although abstraction hasn’t prevented his current powerful rise, doesn’t usually command the same price-tags as representational work. All of which points to the conclusion that predicting prices in the art market is far more hazardous even than in financial markets, including stocks and shares. There will be a Derek Hirst retrospective at Flowers East in July, and it will be interesting to see what happens.

All that really matters, however, is that we’ve lost a terrific talent and can only be grateful that his work is still very much alive. Incidentally, all his career Hirst was fascinated by gold doors, which he painted superbly. I have two of these beauties - I wonder where they will lead?