Keith Vaughan 1912-1977

Mercury Gallery, London
TWP Herbert, 1990
Sir Jeffrey Tate CBE

While at Codford Army Camp Vaughan spent most of 1941 in ‘ misery and discomfort, living in tents. Everything covered in dust and ants.’ During the day he ‘ hauled and hugged and staggered with sacks of coal through continuous rain’ and, during the evenings, he filled his sketchbook with small ink and wash drawings of his comrades and their daily activities. Two journal entries sum up the misery of those days:

June/July 1941: Codford. The rank smell of grass and canvas and warm men. Two latrine buckets filled to the brim each evening. All our bodily functions are performed communally, a gesture of privacy being offered by a thin sheet of canvas. Often I wake with a sense of terror at the sequence of mornings that lie ahead from which there is no escape. One longs to sink back into the oblivion of sleep.

November 1941:

At six o’ clock the guard’ s cane smacks the taut canvas of the tent. Nobody moves but everyone is instantly awake and weighing the agony of getting up against the penalty of staying in the warm cocoon of blankets.

The guard can be heard in the distance thrashing the canvas of the other tents. Presently a tremor passes through the tent like the disturbance of sediment at the bottom of a heated flask. A hand emerges from its blanket and gropes for matches to light a candle. Sleepy but emphatic curses break out. When it is already late everyone gets up together and fights their shivering way into clothes, burrowing into the ruined heaps of kit to find their belongings. With practised skill we knead our blankets into the regulation mould and crawl through the opening, forgetting always the hooks which hoist us back again by the loops on our trousers. Outside the moon is still high and we start the perilous journey over slippery mud and through the minefield of guy ropes and tent pegs to the marquee.

These were Vaughan’ s lowest days in the army and he consoled himself with the fact that he was part of a company of others who each had to endure the same hardships. This comradeship was something he had not known since his school days. He thought that by making visual records of the life he and his fellow conscripts led during the war, he was contributing to the body of war art that was being produced not only by official war artists, but ordinary people. Indeed some of his paintings were exhibited in an exhibition of war art held by Kenneth Clark at the National Gallery, and a handful were bought by the nation as recognised war paintings.

Tib Lane Gallery, Manchester
Mr & Mrs Geoffrey Green (acquired directly from the artist) 
Allen Freer

Whitechapel Art Gallery, London: Keith Vaughan – Retrospective Exhibition. March-April 1962, cat.no. 12. 
Olympia, London. Keith Vaughan. February-March 2002. cat no. KV 458
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester: Keith Vaughan – A Centenary Exhibition. March-June 2012.

This work, from the early 1940s, is thoroughly Neo-Romantic in style and character. Vaughan was in the habit of putting together densely worked sheets of related studies comprising various pages of his sketchbooks. These were pasted down on separate, larger sheets and re-worked as a whole then housed in special hand-made folders. Despite using only the most basic materials of pencil, pen and ink, diluted gouache and crayon, Vaughan was able to produce complex visual ideas with great emotional impact.

Although a fine German speaker, Vaughan was somewhat dyslexic. He titled this work Seligheit but probably intended to use the German word seligkeit , which translates as ‘ bliss’ or ‘ salvation’ . His highly personal journals reveal that he felt emotionally remote from the rest of the world and his paintings of figures sheltering in coves and caves were an instinctual act of self-preservation in a hostile world. He produced three works entitled Seligheit and subsequently exhibited them in his Whitechapel retrospective exhibition in 1962, indicating that the theme carried considerable significance for him. Each possess a cocoon or womb-like quality, as if the crouching figure has located the bliss of a secret place of shelter and safety.

Vaughan’ s inscription implies the date of execution to be 1944. However, the signature and date, inscribed in ballpoint pen, were added long after he completed the study sheet and it was more likely to have been made in early 1943. The study at the upper right has been squared up ready to be transferred to a larger image and was used as the basis for the cover design of ‘ New Writing and Daylight’ in the summer of that year. It was also used again in a bookplate that he designed for Mervyn Jones Evans, however the cave-like shelter in which the figure crouches was transformed into a shell.

Gift from Vaughan to his friend the American artist Bernard Perlin (1918-2014)
Sir Jeffrey Tate

For the later part of the war Vaughan was stationed at Eden Camp, near Malton, in Yorkshire. Army life precluded him setting up a functioning studio in his barracks. Despite this significant limitation, he was determined to continue painting and reduced both the scale and the materials with which he worked. He produced a series of small paintings in gouache with additions of mixed media and described this combination as ‘ a volatile medium’ .

Vaughan’ s paintings from this period record his daily life in the army, the landscape around him and, occasionally, the activities of the local farmers, sowers and fruit-pickers. Schoolboys and young children also feature in his compositions, frequently accompanied by older figures, (see Yorkshire Lane with Figures, 1945, Orchard Scene with Boys Wrestling, 1945, Man and Child on the Moors, 1946). Here the two boys have been gathering fruit from the apple tree behind them. One has filled his wheelbarrow and the other holds his crop of fruit in his hands. An old man accompanies them, his walking stick in one hand as he raises up his other hand in surprise. All three have stopped in their tracks and look towards us, as though we have startled them. This viewer interaction is notable since it is an uncommon feature in Vaughan’ s work. The reason for it is explained in a letter from him to John Minton written from Eden Camp in July 1945:

Actually I’ ve been sparring around with some paintings lately. There’ s a wheelbarrow full of weeds and two people. The sun is shining. There is a gardener and two children in an orchard looking up at a passing train…here are the ochre and umber washes. Here comes the nervous sensitive line.

Translucent inky washes in the background contrast with the more detailed passages of drawing on the figures and tree. We are reminded of the ink drawings and paintings of trees and orchards by Samuel Palmer that were such an influence on the Neo-Romantic painters at this time. However, there is something more disturbing and unsettling in Vaughan’ s. Paintings such as An Orchard by the Railway contain neurotic atmospheres as though they represent scenes taken from a dream. The anxieties and uncertainties of the war, of course, add to this effect, as did Vaughan’ s troubled emotional life.

Private Collection, UK

R.L. Banks
George Milman
Robert Wraight
Sir Richard Attenborough
Private collection, UK

THESEUS AND THE MINOTAURE (INTERIOR AT MINOS or THESEUS), 1950, (P247)
Geffrye Museum, London, ‘Keith Vaughan: Images of Man’ catalogue, illustrated p. 29
Anthony Hepworth & Ian Massey, Keith Vaughan: The Mature Oils 1946 -77, Sansom & Co Bristol, 2012, no. AH99

Lefevre Gallery, London. ‘Keith Vaughan: Paintings and Gouaches’, 1950 (titled Theseus)
Hatton Gallery, University of Durham, Newcastle, ‘Keith Vaughan: Retrospective’, 1965 (no. 7; title Theseus1950)
Whitechapel Gallery, London ‘Keith Vaughan: Retrospective’, 1962 (no. 122; title Theseus 1951; ill. in catalogue pl.xxiii)
Tate Britain, London. On three year loan from 2010-13

In an attempt to encourage British painters to produce large-scale works for the Festival of Britain, the Arts Council offered them free materials and enormous canvases. The idea was to promote ambitious, heroic painting after the wartime period of shortages and rationing. Vaughan submitted Theseus and the Minotaure , the largest picture he ever painted, aside from his publically commissioned murals. He described the painting in the following terms: 

The first thing to say about the painting was that it was wrongly titled owing to my lack of classicalscholarship. I was under the impression that Minos was an island instead of the name of the king. Thepainting should be called ‘ Theseus’ or ‘ Theseus and the Minotaure’ . It was suggested by André Gide’ s novelThésée in which the minotaure is depicted not as the horned monster of classical anthropology but as a misunderstood youth who spends his time in the labyrinth eating pomegranates and picking petals off flowers.

(Keith Vaughan, letter, quoted in Hepworth, Keith Vaughan the Mature Oils , Sansom & Co., 2012)

The Classical Myth:

In the Homeric myth, King Minos was the powerful ruler of ancient Crete. To sanction his authority and confirm his legitimacy to rule he prayed to Poseidon to send him a sign. This came in the form of a white bull rising from the waves. Minos did not sacrifice it to Poseidon, as instructed, but substituted another and kept the prized animal. As punishment Poseidon cursed him by having his wife Queen Pasiphae fall in love with the bull. She became pregnant and gave birth to a halfman, half-bull creature – the Minotaur. Minos ordered his architect Daedalus to construct a series of labyrinthine corridors beneath his palace at Knossos in which to imprison the monster.

Minos went on to defeat the Athenians after a drawn-out military dispute. As tribute King Aegeus was forced, every nine years, to deliver up seven young men and seven young women to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. On the third occasion his son Theseus volunteered as one of the victims, undertaking to slay the Minotaur. When he arrived in Crete he met Ariadne, daughter of Minos and they fell in love. She gave him a ball of twine to unravel as he set off into the labyrinth. After a fearsome battle Theseus slayed the Minotaur and, aided by the twine, was able to navigate his way back to Ariadne. They escaped Crete together, sailing to the island of Naxos where Theseus later abandoned her.

André Gide’ s Narrative:

While preparing Theseus and the Minotaure Vaughan turned to French literature for inspiration rather than illustrate the much-visited ancient legend. André Gide, one of his favourite writers, published his final novel Thésée in 1946, having worked on it for over two decades. Vaughan read this reimagined version in French and based his painting on Gide’ s post-Freudian interpretation.

For him the Minotaur represented a fatal, self-absorbing beauty whose destructive allure was completely irresistible. He transposed the Minotaur, usually conceived as violent and murderous, to symbolise the principle of self-destruction – the monster within us all. Theseus has to engage in a battle with himself, therefore, before escaping the labyrinth. His conflict is not so much with the Minotaur, but a struggle for his soul against his inner self-monster and the forces of luxurious indulgence. The labyrinth, in Gide’ s conception, is an internal prison of one’ s own devising, the walls and corridors of which are buried deep within the self. These are filled with such pungent narcotics, one never feels the urge to escape.

Vaughan’ s Interpretation:

Two years after the publication of Thésée Vaughan visited Paris and had a brief affair with a young man called Karlo. His journal states that on his return Vaughan felt trapped inside his own internal labyrinth, caught between self-indulgence and futile attempts to work:

August 14, 1948:

Treasure the memory of Karlo – his debonair grace – his laughter, his frank lust, his beauty, his fantasticsordid, tiny room in the roof – stairs – naked lamps – labyrinth of corridors – pitch black – holding hishand like Ariadne stumbling after Theseus. Very much a slave now to vice, to sexual lusts, increasing complication of solitary gratification. Paralysis of will, imagination, action. Sit for hours in my studioblocked by noise of traffic, crescendo, decrescendo – like soft repeating whip lashes over my raw brain.

Hands bleed from clawing the smooth hard surface for a hold. I become aware of this growing sense of doom which has been going on for a year or more. Almost as though I were under the sentence of death.

Theseus:

Theseus appears in the heart of the labyrinth, having negotiated its passageways. He is emerging into a light-filled room silhouetted against the blackness of the doorway. He stands, head bowed and arms open, as though offering himself as a sacrificial victim. At first his pose and attitude might seem puzzlingly submissive, since his traditional motive for having arrived here is to slay the Minotaur. But in Gide’ s conception he is also here to slay the self-monster. Vaughan describes him in a grey-buff colour, slightly darker than the other figures, reminding us of Gide’ s words: 

‘The colour of truth is grey.’ He is psychologically removed from the other two figures and mentally prepares himself for his ordeal.

Ariadne:

Ariadne, emotionally detached from both Thesues and the Minotaur, does not turn towards her lover as he arrives. She stares abstractedly at something undisclosed outside the realm of the painting. This might be explained in the following way. In both the classical myth and in Gide’ s interpretation Ariadne should be in the palace of Minos, awaiting Theseus. Vaughan employs continuous narrative and expects the viewer to accept that he is simultaneously representing her and the others within the same physical space. This was a common pictorial convention of the Quattrocento narrative painters that Vaughan so admired. She is naked, vulnerable and crosslegged. Her self-embracing pose, twitching toes and neurotic stare communicate her anxiety. Perhaps she has prescience, in the manner of the Virgin Mary in Renaissance paintings, of her forthcoming sadness – of how she will be abandoned by Theseus. Alternatively, Vaughan’ s journal entry of 1948 implies that he understood Ariadne to have followed Theseus through the labyrinth and, given his uncertain grasp of the original myth, has included her in the scene.

The Minotaur:

The Minotaur of antiquity is traditionally depicted in Western art as a fearsome, tormented beast, half-man and half bull, complete with horns, hair and hooves. His rapacious, blood-thirsty nature made him one of the most formidable creatures of Greek mythology. In Vaughan’ s characterization he represents the allure of physical beauty and pleasure, in accordance with Gide’ s narrative. His narcissistic, open pose displays his athletic proportions and genitalia and reveals a character used to languorous, pleasure-seeking pursuits. He yawns and stretches, invincible and irresistible in his all-consuming world of hedonism. Lying on the floor before him is a pomegranate, a lemon and discarded petals torn from flowers in his indolent ennui . The figure is based on Vaughan’ s Reclining Nude , 1950, painted around this time. Even the lemon is retained in the composition.

Vaughan made a series of pencil studies to work out the figural arrangements and treatment of the complex space. The bed on which the Minotaur reclines, for example, is viewed from several anglessimultaneously in accordance with Cubist principles. Furthermore, the consistent tilting and flattening of form creates a stage-like setting, intentionally theatrical and stylized. The artificiality of this pictorial space has to support both the presence of Ariadne in the palace, and the presence of Theseus and the Minotaur in the labyrinth. Similarly Vaughan’ s palette is un-naturalistically muted with only a few accents of colour provided by the blue sheet and the discarded fruits on the floor. The dark, claustrophobic atmosphere creates a sense of foreboding and assists in emphasizing the pale fleshy tones of the figures. A naturalistic treatment could not have been further from Vaughan’ s intention:

September, 1963:

All art is artifact, artificial, unreal. A parody of reality. Reality is simply the fleeting pain or joy that is inside you, which vanishes as soon as you try to refine it in shape or word. That is why all talk of realism in art is nonsense. Reality may be implied, intended, hinted at, even glimpsed, but never revealed or stated.

Vaughan admired Gide as both a writer and a man. He identified with him as a creative spirit and shared with him similar philosophical attitudes as well as sexual tastes. There is a passage that seems prophetic when we apply it to Vaughan:

I face death alone willingly. I’ ve tasted the best of life. It is pleasing to me to think that after I am gone, thanks

to me, mankind will be happier, better and freer. For the benefit of future man, I created my work. I lived.

Ruth Holden (née Lynam)
Private collection

Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1957
Leicester Galleries, London

These three drawings are studies for ‘Seated Figure, 1951’ that was in the collection of the late Peter Meyer, a great Vaughan collector and subsequently sold at auction in 2008.

These dimensions are the overall measurement for all three drawings

Agnew’ s, London, 1990
Private Collection, UK

Instituto de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires, Keith Vaughan Pinturas Y Dibujos , November 1950, no. 18.
Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London, Keith Vaughan 1912-1977, November – December 1989, no. 5.
Agnew’s, London, Keith Vaughan 1912-1977 , November – December 1990, no. 58, p.8.

The subject of a figure in an orchard picking fruit, or in a landscape reaching up to branches, occurs frequently in Vaughan’ s painting, (see Figures Climbing Trees , 1946, Figure Beneath a Tree Branch , 1947, Man Gathering Fruit , 1948 and Water Trees and Figures , 1948). On a formal level it opened up the human form and the dynamic gesture increased the emotional potential of the male figure. Here a young boy hangs on to a branch above his head. His clothing implies it is summertime, though the bare branches of the tree might indicate otherwise. He is alone, save for the presence of his dog. The mood is melancholic and, like so many of Vaughan’ s paintings, an unexplained air of sadness hangs about him.

One of Vaughan’ s accomplishments was to cultivate the medium of gouache away from its use inadvertising and commercial studios and increase its expressive range in fine art painting. Indian ink and watery washes are combined to play off against opaque gouache passages of harmonized colour. The effect is strengthened by the inclusion of Vaughan’ s ubiquitous scratched-in, inky lines, which delineate the subject and reinforce the design. He discussed his use of these materials in an interview some years later:

Those early pictures were not of course pure gouache. They were mixtures of wax crayon, Indian ink and gouache. And the chemical properties of these different materials to a large extent determined their own control. They react on each in certain ways which can be exploited but cannot be prevented. You might call it a volatile medium. Oil paint is quite different. It is a totally inert medium which will do nothing of its own accord, except get you messed up.

(Keith Vaughan, interview with Dr. Tony Carter, 1963)

Man with a Chair probably started out as one of Vaughan’ s many life drawings. Around this time he was teaching painting and illustration at the Central School of Art and had access to a life studio and full-time model. The formal stance, the chair and the model’ s posing pouch might indicate this. He produced many comparable gouaches of nude models, and in an interview given a few years later, he defended his relentless obsession with this subject:

These compositions rely on the assumption (hard to justify perhaps, but none the less real to me) 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.

(Keith Vaughan: Painter’ s Progress, ‘ Studio’ , August, 1958)

It is clear that much of Vaughan’ s interest here is in the articulation of the human form and how the limbs of the human body occupy and move through space. We sense muscular tension in the anatomical curves and arcs and a tangible weightiness in the volumes. Each stage of the picture making process is retained in the final image – the pen and ink observation marks, the gouache tonal in-fills and the suggestions of light and shade to add solidity to the form.

The Leicester Galleries, London
R. Muir, Esq.
The Piccadilly Gallery, London
Mrs. Swanhild Castle, New York
Private Collection, UK

Ruth Holden (née Lynam), London
Private Collection, UK

Osborne Samuel, Keith Vaughan, Paintings and Drawings , 24 May – 23 June 2007, No. 37 p.61 (illus)

Piccadilly Gallery, London, 1969

Acrobats is a light-hearted image in terms of its imagery and the manner in which it is constructed, something not altogether common in Vaughan’ s work. Strangely, we view the two figures from behind as they totter away from us, one precariously balancing on his unsteady companion’ s shoulders. The supporting figure is described tonally with the light source coming from the left, while the upper figure is rendered emphatically flat, without any light or shade. Other pictorial discrepancies add to the visual wit. For example, while the comical duo is depicted figuratively and monochromatically, the setting is completely abstract and conjured up in a colourful visual language. The white leg of the upper figure merges into the arm of the supporting figure, as though they are a single form. Vaughan is economical in his choice of earthy ochres and umbers but to enliven the effect he has added a pale blue lozenge at the upper right and included a cobalt blue rectangle next to the figures.

We ask ourselves, who are these amusing characters? Where are they going and what are they doing? They seem to tolerate an absurd and precarious relationship, like Estragon and Vladimir in Beckett’ s Waiting for Godot . It comes as little surprise to learn that the play was premiered in English the same year Vaughan painted this gouache.

Private Collection, UK

Private Collection, UK

This is one of Vaughan’ s most unusual and puzzling male nudes. A figure sits in an armchair motionless and in profile while staring towards something unseen at the right. In all anatomical respects he is human but we are struck by his facial resemblance to a primate. No pictorial clues are offered as to why Vaughan has represented the figure in such a manner and he makes no enlightening reference to this in his journal, nor did he paint any comparable works. It is certainly enigmatic and perplexing. Nevertheless it remains a compelling image and we are forced to stare intently at the figure as he intently stares out of the picture plane.

Ten years before he painted Seated Figure Vaughan discussed his approach to his painting in gouache in his journal:

July 31st 1943

One thing seems pretty clear now about my painting. I do not paint as a result of a visual experience, or from any positive urge to expression. My painting is compensatory. I start with an excited awareness of certain materials, Indian ink, white paint, ochre, chalk, and a more or less contained predisposition for certain forms, the stone circle, rock forms, elemental non-precise forms, and seek to arrange them in a way which will relive and satisfy me. As every possible known or unknown arrangement is open to me, the question of which to use becomes bewitching.

Dr Patrick Woodcock, by whom gifted to the present owner
Private Collection, Ireland
Osborne Samuel London

Vaughan was familiar with Worbarrow Bay on the Isle of Purbeck and painted several works inspired by its craggy, limestone cliffs (see Purbeck Landscape 1963; Small Limestone Landscape, 1963 and Black Purbeck Landscape, 1964). The coastline is popular with sea divers, not least because of the dramatic underwater boulders and gullies and the wreck of a barge off Worbarrow Tout. The present work was inspired by an incident from the previous year. In the summer of 1963, Vaughan drove down to the Jurassic Coast specifically to hunt for new subjects. While sitting having a drink at the Swanage Hotel, he recorded in his journal an encounter with some sea divers that morning:

We drove down on Saturday through hideous traffic until at Romney we cut adrift & took byways through the New Forest. Blissful Isolation & open roads. Beer & Sandwiches at a little pub. There were perfect moments – the first view of Chapman’s Pool on Sunday morning, crossing the stubbly field near the farm, the low stone wall. And then the sudden unsuspected drop away & the bay far below, nearly deserted, china blue.

The scramble down – knee-breaking. So much further than it looks, the distances always deceptive in this landscape which was made for Mastodons. Then the group of skin divers which appeared from outer space, peeling on their incredibly erotic, skin tight rubbers, crutch piece, belt of lead, leggings, top piece, helmet & goggles. Then they set off face down on the water, dozens at a time, only their red periscopes showing. (Keith Vaughan, Journal XLIV – supplement, Swanage, July 29-31, 1963).

The group of figures are preparing for their dive. The standing, foreground figure, complete with flippers and swimming trunks, dominates the composition. Arms raised, he prepares to ‘peel on’ his gear. His friends stand or sit on a rock close by. The neutral palette indicates a grey overcast day and the patches of black and splashes of paint evoke the rubbery squelch of their diving suits. Areas of collage and hand-rendered lettering (these are not unknown elsewhere in Vaughan’s more improvisatory gouaches) can also be seen and add to the texture and inventive quality of the imagery.

Gerard Hastings

Marlborough Fine Art, London
Prof. John Ball bequeath to the Hargreaves and Ball Trust
Private Collection

Philip Vann & Gerald Hastings. Keith Vaughan , Lund Humphries in association with Osborne Samuel, London, 2012, (illus. pl.180, p.171 as Ait-Rassam).

Vaughan had always been interested in the theme of assembling groups of figures and was particularly struck by the exotic crowds he discovered gathering outside the mosques at Taroudannt and at religious meetings he witnessed in Ait-Kassam. Cinnamon-tinted figures emerge from the similarly coloured setting. Rich purples are played off against blue forms and white figures. The thread-like licks of white pigment trailing across the composition feature in several of the Moroccan gouaches.

From the mid 1960s onwards, Vaughan was steering his course midway between figuration and abstraction. In an interview he gave the year he painted this gouache, he described his approach in the following terms:

I am steering closer towards the point of total non-figuration, moving towards a sort of musical interpretation – an abstracted interpretation…like a musician, the subject matter becomes less and less important as the painting takes shape…The subject-matter is simply what gets one going and where you kick off from.

Alan Ross (Owner and editor of London Magazine 1961-2001)

Olympia, London, 2002 (386)
Osborne Samuel Gallery, London, 2007, (p.70 no.49)

North African Scene is one of Vaughan’ s working drawings and was most probably made in situ since the use of pastel and pencil is so freshly worked. The crenellated skyline in the middle distance is repeated at the right, in the foreground. This visual rhyme links the rooftop formations with the row of heads of the figures and helps explain the reoccurring, block-like motifs we find in many of his major paintings of the 1960s (see Group of Figures , 1964, Musicians at Marrakesh , 1966 and Crowd Assembling I & II , 1968). The arrows, at the upper centre, notate and emphasize this idea and probably function as aides memoires for future reference.

Unable to travel with brushes and oil paints, Vaughan formed the habit of taking small notebooks, pencils and pastels with him on holiday. His drawings, source photographs and journal notations were used to remind him of the colours and atmospheres of the places he visited and assisted him in working out compositions in his studio back in London.

The reddish, mud-coloured buildings and the white and blue djellabas, depicted in pastel, correspond to Vaughan’ s journal descriptions. It is a highly worked image and a good deal of vigourous rubbing and scraping has taken place. Several different pastels have been overlaid and blended to achieve a distinctly tactile quality. The interpenetration of the forms is simultaneously conceived in both abstract and figurative terms as Vaughan amalgamates individual figures. This formal integration became a hallmark of much of his work of the mid-1960s and here expresses the bustle and jostle of the Moroccan scene.

Prof. John Ball 
Dr Julian Lax 
Nicolas and Frances McDowall 

Labels on frame verso inscribed: “Bought by J.N. Ball from Keith Vaughan, January 1967, at his studio at 9, Belsize Park, Hampstead, London, NW3. My first purchase directly from Keith Vaughan.”

Night Bathers is one of Vaughan’ s most haunting and perplexing gouaches. The predominantly dark, monochromatic nature of the woodland setting evokes a distinctly enigmatic mood, which echoes his former Neo-Romantic style. The silvery light on the two figures amplifies the mysterious atmosphere implying that they are illuminated by moonlight. The dominating foreground figure, passive and pensive, is viewed in profile while his more active companion occupies the middle distance. We detect a quality of anxious tension and wonder why are they bathing by night and why they are physically apart from one another?

Perhaps the puzzling imagery in Night Bathers may be explained by the disintegration of Vaughan’ s relationship with his partner Ramsay who had recently moved to their Harrow Hill cottage in Essex. Vaughan visited him most weekends, inviting Patrick Procktor, David Hockney, Keith Milow and various other friends to join them. Mario Dubsky, one of Vaughan’ s students, remembered how they would all go bathing at night in the swimming pond at the end of the garden and this gouache may recall one of those occasions.

On the reverse of the frame are various exhibition labels. One of them informs us that this painting once belonged to John Ball and Gordon Hargreaves, Vaughan’ s close friends and keen collectors.

It reads: 
Bought by J. N. Ball from Keith Vaughan, January 1967, at his studio at 9, Belsize Park, Hampstead, London, NW3. My first purchase directly from Keith Vaughan.

Redfern Gallery, London 

Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London 

Christie’s London, 1991

Private Collection, UK (purchased from the above) 

Osborne Samuel, London

In 1964 Vaughan bought a row of derelict cottages in the heart of the Essex countryside and set about renovating them. He created a small studio upstairs where he worked on small-scale oil paintings and gouaches at the weekends and during the summer months. Having nowhere to swim, he cleared a patch of land at end of the garden and excavated a waterhole. Railway sleepers interspersed with plants were dug into a shallow embankment to create a picturesque setting. The pool was more than a mere source of recreation. The theme of bathers had been a central subject in Vaughan’s work since the mid 1940s and now he began to paint friends reclining and drying themselves at the water’s edge in his garden. Two Bathers by a Pool depicts such a scene. Fellow artists were invited to visit Harrow Hill cottage at weekends. Patrick Procktor was a regular guest from 1966 onwards as was Mario Dubsky, one of Vaughan’s most talented pupils at the Slade. He recalled days spent making drawings of each other by the pool and Vaughan being at his most relaxed:

‘Keith and Patrick and I had some great fun. We held summer parties in the garden, swimming naked of course, and drank freezing drinks in between skinny dips in the pool. Mrs. Vaughan sometimes sat knitting in her deckchair, at the other end [of the garden], keeping a watchful eye on us. God knows what she thought of me and Patrick larking around after several gins. But we also had some serious discussions well into the night, about painting and literature. Keith would tell me what I should be reading. Patrick and Keith used to talk endlessly about the ways they could turn their personal experiences of life into art.’

MARIO DUBSKY, FROM GERARD HASTINGS, ‘PARADISE FOUND AND LOST: KEITH VAUGHAN IN ESSEX’, PAGHAM PRESS, 2016

Procktor also brought with him the filmmaker Derek Jarman who, apparently, loved nothing better than to strip down and dive off the railway sleepers into the pool. The BAFTA-winning documentary maker Peter Adam visited along with his illustrious friends, including David Hockney, the grand master of the pool-painting genre. He recalled them all swimming and wallowing together in Vaughan’s garden pond – a far cry from the glamorous Californian pools he was used to:

‘David was living in Los Angeles but on his annual visit to his family in Bradford, (his mother still thought that it was the sun that bleached his hair!), he always took care to visit Keith. Once we drove in his new Morris Minor convertible to Essex. We splashed about in his little natural pool…All that amused Keith greatly.’

PETER ADAM, FROM ‘GERARD HASTINGS, KEITH VAUGHAN: THE PHOTOGRAPHS’, PAGHAM PRESS, 2013

Agnew’s, London ‘Keith Vaughan,’ 2012, no.25

Austin Desmond Fine Art, Keith Vaughan, May-June 2012, no.25

Beginning to make a gouache, Vaughan would first block out colours, working intuitively. He thus started 

as usual, with no more than a process. The making of a series of wet marks across the white board in a sequence of colours (blue black I fancy at the moment) and see where it leads.¹

Indian ink might then amplify the emerging forms, outlining figures against the coloured ground. Each decision was guided by what came before, as part of a complex, fluid approach.

The texture and composition of Maze of Figures bear witness to this method of working. Tonally, the image consists of layers of colour – brown, blue and green – in slabs and lines, wet on wet, dripped and spattered, from which emerge and recede the overlapping silhouettes of figures. A connection with abstraction expressionism proves tempting if elusive. In his journal for 1974, Vaughan recorded,

Looked at some pictures of Jackson Pollock. Some are still good. Though I could do better. Scale, energy and nerve is all one requires.²

Energy and nerve are present in abundance in Maze of Figures: its lines effervesce, calligraphically and contrapuntally, against a tapestry of colour.

¹ Keith Vaughan, Journal (2 July 1972).

² Keith Vaughan, Journal (26 November 1974).

The Artist’s Estate

Agnew’s 

Private Collection, UK

Malcolm Yorke, Keith Vaughan Journals (1939-1976), ill. p.214

Agnew’s, British Art 1900-1998, September – October 1998, no.113

In the early 1960s, inspired by his students, in particular Mario Dubsky (1939–1985), Vaughan began to experiment with working in charcoal on a large scale. Dubsky studied at the Slade, and on leaving was awarded the Abbey Major Scholarship by a committee including Vaughan. From him Vaughan learnt how to blend charcoal, rubbing it into the paper, to create subtle grades of black that could be cut through or highlighted by an eraser.

The potential of the medium is demonstrated superbly by Two Men (1970), in which Vaughan contrasts the gentlest shading, used to define the centre of the left figure’s torso, and thus the twist of his body, with the velvety depth of shadow outlining his shoulder. Between the two figures are medium tones, and upon the draped cloth can be seen the smudged imprint of Vaughan’s own fingers. Against this, strong charcoal lines select and convey the outline of an ear, a navel, nostrils – only those details necessary to characterise the mood, the attitude, of the composition.

Linking the two men there is a homoerotic charge all the more powerful because of its ambiguity. The righthand figure’s intense gaze and proprietorial posture are countered by the left’s seeming casualness. Both are virile, unselfconsciously naked. It is a moment suspended: where it might lead – to passion, detachment or malevolence – is open to conjecture.

The Artist’s Estate
The Belgrave Gallery, London
Austin Desmond Fine Art, London
Private Collection

The Artist’s Estate
The Belgrave Gallery , London
Private Collection

A rare female subject, a situation possibly stemming from his use of models in the life-rooms of the leading London art schools where he taught- first Camberwell during the late 1940s followed by the Central school in the 1950s, and finally the Slade (1960s). At the Central, Vaughan made still life drawing of table motifs of the kind that appears behind the semi-reclining female figure here. At the Slade, he joined in life sessions with the students, thereby ‘teaching’ by example.
‘Female Nude in Interior’ is a densely hatched, worked-up pencil composition constructed with firm, heavily inscribed, and swiftly shaded marks. The barely touched areas that define the figure impart a fleshy luminosity against the dark interior. Gerald Hastings has described some of Vaughan’s 1960s drawings- of which this is a likely period example- as being “more aggressively forged with dense graphite surfaces built up in webs and meshes of cross-hatchings” [1]. It was indeed during the 1960s that David Thompson, author of the artist’s 1964 Whitechapel Art Gallery retrospective catalogue, described “a formidable draughtsman who achieved uncommon eloquence with pencil and pen”.

1) Gerald Hastings “Keith Vaughan-Gouaches, Drawings, and Prints”, p9, Osborne Samuel, 2011