The Garden at Ashton Gifford, 1944
Gouache
Signed & dated recto, lower right
25.5 x 21.5 cm (10 x 8½ inches)

Provenance:
Redfern Gallery, London
Private Collection

Exhibition History:

British Drawings 1939 - 49, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, June 1969

Notes:
Between 1941 - 46, Vaughan was a non-combatant in the army, and stationed with the Royal Pioneer Corps at first in Codford, Wiltshire and later in Yorkshire. It was in Wiltshire that he painted The Wall at Ashton Gifford, now in the possession of the Manchester Art Gallery, [54] and Tree Felling at Ashton Gifford, 1942 - 43 which is illustrated in Keith Vaughan: His Life and Work by Malcolm York (b&w ill, p71). This gouache, painted shortly after this, also depicts the walled garden at Ashton Gifford and is one of a series of drawings Vaughan did at the time depicting men clearing wood. In his correspondance to Norman Towne, he discribes this series:

The white and ochre branches plunging down into the oceanic surging tangle of nettles. People walking through the waist-high grass, through the aqueous leaf-green shadow, arms full of dead wood....And the wall running as an indefatigable horizontal, losing and finding itself in the jungle of weed and ivy...I wanted to capture this in lassoes of line and nets of colour, but it's more difficult than writing about it.
Keith Vaughan, Journal 62-63, 7 December 1975
POA