The Frozen Tarn

Vincent Massey was the Canadian High Commissioner to Britain during WW2, and later became the first Canadian-born Governor General of Canada. He was also an art collector, and took a close interest in the activities of the both the Canadian and British war artists. Richard's set of Dunkirk pictures painted in 1940 were done speculatively before he was taken on as a official war artist, so he had to try to sell them through the Redfern gallery. Massey bought the biggest of them, Dunkirk Beaches, May 1940 (1940), at the 1941 exhibition, along with Staithes, Yorkshire (1938).

Mrs Massey bought 'The Frozen Tarn' from that same show. The picture depicts the tarn or small lake on the edge of Ilkley Moor in Yorkshire, not far from where Richard lived in the early 1920s.