Boy

The theme of the male nude in a landscape recurs frequently in Vaughan's work: 'an inheritance from the classical Mediterranean world and the heroic nudes of Michaelangelo and El Greco. Even the 'pure' landscapes are haunted by a sense of the absent figure. In his mature work Vaughan reconciles his youthful self, the 'Haywire Romantic' with a new classical restraint, acknowledging that he was influenced in this by Cézanne's life more than by his art. His earlier vulnerable, individual figures become monumental and dignified heroes, set in a timeless landscape. There are echoes of Picasso and Matisse but more significantly of De Staël, from whom Vaughan explored a flatter, more abstract and fragmented handling of paint, while retaining a strong contour and sense of volume in his figures' (see exhibition catalogue, Keith Vaughan: Drawings and Paintings, 1985, p. 2).