Figures and Boats, 1953
Gouache on Card
Dated c.1953 - 4
Signed lower left
16.9 x 13.9 cm (6¾ x 5½ inches)

Provenance:
Kenneth Hood (1928-2002) Australian artist and National Gallery of Victoria Deputy Director and
Curator of Australian Decorative Arts
Joshua McClelland Print Room, Melbourne
Private Collection, Australia

Notes:
In the early 1950s Keith Vaughan began a series of figure groups set in a landscape of which the Tate owns Small Assembly of Figures, 1951. The colours, tones, landscape and fundamental preoccupation are the same as in the present picture. Vaughan believed that, ‘the human figure, the nude, is still a valid symbol for the expression of man’s aspirations and reactions to the life of his time.' The critic Bernard Denvir pointed out that ‘the male human body assumed in his work an importance it had never known before in the history of British painting’. Although Vaughan (like Francis Bacon) received no formal training as a painter, his school, Christ’s Hospital, Horsham gave him an excellent grounding in Italian Renaissance art. This grounding is reflected in the strength and balance of these works. Vaughan’s reputation has continued to flourish, marking his
impact on Modern British painting. In 2002 a retrospective was held at Olympia Fine Art and Antiques Fair, London followed by Keith Vaughan: Figures and Landscape at Victoria Art Gallery Bath and more recently Keith Vaughan: Paintings and Drawings held at Osborne Samuel, London also in 2007.
POA