When Patrick Heron died in 1999, at the age of 79, he was widely eulogised as a major figure within the St Ives group of artists, and one of the leading British painters of the twentieth century. Mousehole Harbour was painted in 1947, just a few years before he distilled his imagery to pure abstraction, when Heron had begun his departure from illustrative, representational imagery in order to focus on communicating through the direct experience of form and colour. As he argued in the Introduction to his collected essays, The Changing Forms of Art: 'In most of the best modern art the form is increasingly the content of a work. ... Form is content now.' (2)

In the following year, 1947, Heron exhibited at the Redfern Gallery, when this painting was shown and bought. The exhibition drew critical acclaim. Heron was described as a 'genuine colourist', whose use of colour 'does not involve any timidity', and who could 'make an abstraction without reducing everything to formula'. (5)\

Sabih Aykoler and Fello Atkinson were close friends to Patrick Heron. Katharine Heron has spoken of the friendship,:' Sabih was warm and hospitable. He was Turkish and worked for BBC Turkey in London. His life partner Fello was at school with Patrick at St Georges Harpenden. Their remarkable art master introduced them and other friends to art and architecture. Fello became a friend of the whole Heron family and remained a close friend of Patrick throughout his life. The architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock, introduced by Fello, persuaded Patrick to paint a portrait of Fello. Fello had impeccable taste, was sociable and elegant. James Cubitt, Fello Atkinson and partners designed university buildings around the world, and in the UK at Cambridge and Oxford. They designed commercial buildings including for Roche pharmaceuticals at Welwyn Garden City and for Cummins in Darlington. A single elegant house designed by Fello in the 1950s in Leicestershire for the Goddard family who lived there until the recent sale. During the war Fello was based in America and saw little active service, instead acquainting himself with new American architecture. He returned to complete his studies at the Architectural Association'.