As dusk descends and a dense night sky closes in, three bathers emerge from the sea, showing no urgency to leave after their swim. Behind them, the horizon can be seen in the dying light. They neither communicate nor interact with one another, but dry themselves off in an unexpectedly pensive manner. We are provided with no visual cues to explain their sombre mood. In Western art, the male nude is typically presented as heroic and active, conforming to established ideals of virility and masculinity; Vaughan’s conception, by contrast, is passive and introspective.
Group of Bathers demonstrates certain technical advances in Vaughan’s handling of oil paint and use of colour. The stiffness and awkward modelling evident in his earlier work give way to a more confident application of pigment. The figures are rendered with tactile richness, as patches of evening light penetrate the overhanging branches and fall across their bodies. The illumination of their dappled skin incorporates a range of colours – iron ochre, Prussian blue, orange and cadmium yellow – producing decorative complexity and physical immediacy.
Although absorbed in quiet, private actions, the figures are nonetheless presented as young and virile. The treatment of their limbs suggests their bodies are capable of athletic and energetic movement. The sinuous, repeated arcs of back, spine and outstretched arm are echoed elsewhere in the setting through rhyming curves. These organic rhythms are set against the formality of straight lines and angles, defining their towels spread out onthe geometrically shaped rocks.
The bathers, unaware of the viewer’s presence, exemplify a generic figure type that formed the basis of Vaughan’s conception of the male nude for several years: round-headed, youthful, long-limbed and contemplative. In the foreground, one raises an arm while crossing his torso with the other, as if drying himself with an invisible towel; his left leg is modelled through subtle modulations of shadow drawn from the surrounding blues. The thick-thighed profile figure at the left quietly dries his hands, head bowed in concentration. The central figure, last to emerge from the rockpool, adopts a pose that recurs frequently in Vaughan’s work, appearing in paintings such as Stooping Bather, completed the same year. This pose serves three functions. The vertical supporting leg anchors the figure. The other bent leg suggests movement and vitality, while introducing a sense of restrained eroticism.

Peter Gimpel
Mrs L. Coleman
Mrs Gillian Raffles
Anthony Hepworth, Bath
Prof. J. Ball
Private collection, U.K.
Private collection, U.K.

Whitechapel Gallery, Keith Vaughan: Retrospective, exhibition catalogue, London, 1962, cat. no. 128 (ill. pl. XXI)
A. Hepworth, Keith Vaughan: Figure and Landscape, exhibition catalogue, London, 2007, p. 16 (ill.)
A. Hepworth, The Hargreaves and BallTrust Selected Works, London, 2010, p. 6 (ill.)
A. Hepworth and I. Massey, Keith Vaughan: The Mature Oils, 1946-77, Sansom and Co., Bristol, 2012, cat. no. AH112. p. 72 (ill.col.)

Newcastle-upon-Tyne, University of Durham, Hatton Gallery, Keith Vaughan: Retrospective, 1956, no. 18 (where titled Bathers); touring exhibition, Arts Council, Keith Vaughan: Retrospective, 1957
London, Whitechapel Gallery, Keith Vaughan: Retrospective, exhibition catalogue, 1962, cat. no. 128
London, Olympia Fine Art and Antiques Fair, Keith Vaughan: Paintings and Drawings, 2002, no. 472
Bath, Victoria Art Gallery, Keith Vaughan: Figure and Landscape, 2007, cat. no. 7
Anthony Hepworth, London, The Hargreaves and Ball Trust Selected Works, 2010
Chichester, Pallant House, Keith Vaughan: Romanticism to Abstraction, 2012