British artist Patrick Caulfield studied at the Chelsea School of Art in the late 1950s and at the Royal College of Art from 1960 to 1963, where his fellow pupils included David Hockney and R. B. Kitaj.
In 1964, he exhibited at the 'New Generation' show at London's Whitechapel Gallery, which resulted in his association with the Pop Art movement. Caulfield, not wanting to be linked to the emerging Pop movement and American Pop artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, preferred to refer to himself as a 'formal' painter. For Caulfield sought inspiration not from American painters, but from the renowned Spanish Cubist artist Juan Gris.

Caulfield taught at the Chelsea School of Art from 1963-71, but only after leaving was he able to fully dedicate his energy to painting. During this period, Caulfield developed his interests in light and shade, which he frequently explored within the confines of increasingly complex architectural spaces in flat areas of intense colour delineated by sharp black outlines.

'Girl On Terrace' is an exemplary work from this period where figure, architecture and objects are all rendered in Caulfield's inimitably vivid style. The interior - a Mediterranean terrace dominated by an intense blue reminiscent of twilight hours - is pricked with the light of a bright white candle and its yellow flame. Throughout his career, Caulfield did very few figurative works. This is a particularly impactful and intimate painting, as the sitter in shadow is none other than the artist's wife.