Finisterre, Spain

In 1949 Vaughan and several friends went on a cycling holiday in Brittany, an experience that was to inform his work for several years. They spent most of their time in coastal Finistre, where the landscape struck him as ''harsh, dour and dramatic --- black, white, grey and ochre: peasant life, seaweed hoists and other motifs" (see Exhibition catalogue, Keith Vaughan Retrospective Exhibition, London, Whitechapel Gallery, 1962, p. 10). Now, Vaughan's spelling was always rather bad, surprisingly so in someone with his literary and linguistic skills, and he persistently refers in his writings to the region as Finisterre, suggesting the headland of Cap Finisterre on the Atlantic coast of Spain, a place he never visited. To be fair to Vaughan, many English writers have also used this confusing spelling, but this spelling muddle has caused some confusion about the titles and subjects of several pictures from this period.
The present 1951 work issued into a closely similar lithograph of 1952, which he again unfortunately titled Finisterre.

We are very grateful to Professor John Ball for providing the catalogue entry for this lot.