Keith Vaughan (British, 1912-1977)


Abstract Landscape stamped with studio stamp 'K.V.' (lower right)gouache, ink and oil pastel40 x 33cm (15 3/4 x 13in).Executed circa 1973-4
|ProvenanceAcquired by the family of the present owner, and thence by descentPrivate Collection, U.K.This late gouache was executed around 1973/74, when Vaughan was living and working for much of the time at his Harrow Hill cottage in Essex. At first glance it appears to be an abstract image, but on closer consideration we are able to make out the dark vertical bough of a tree, green and black hedges and undergrowth, the dark green sloping roof of a barn and, perhaps, a blue window. Throughout his career Vaughan had tried to achieve this synthesis between abstraction and figuration and many passages in his journal and studio notebooks discusses his objectives. 'Imagination is based always on observation; it is a summary of the evidence of the senses, intensified in the memory and carried forward one stage into the future where it stands as a revelation of the truth not yet achieved by the slower process of nature...the point of value lies in whether our own experience is enlarged by the distortion.' (Keith Vaughan quoted in Gerard Hastings, Paradise Lost and Found: Keith Vaughan in Essex, Pagham Press, 2016, p.45) We are grateful to Gerard Hastings, whose new book on Keith Vaughan's graphic art will be published by Pagham Press later in the year, for compiling this catalogue entry.