The Sower

Vaughan was stationed at Malton in Yorkshire for much of the war, working as a German interpreter and office clerk. Having been brought up in London he was deeply affected by the new landscape in which he found himself and the rural types who occupied and tended it: farmers, harvesters, fruit-pickers, grass-cutters and in this case, a sower. He perceived in their activities something wholesome, timeless and poetic. The present work was doubtless influenced by Jean-Francois Millet's painting of 1850 which bears the same title; much of the quasi-religious intensity and elegiac quality of that work is retained here. However Vaughan's depiction was also inspired by a particular event which he observed. The puzzling detail of a sower with his eyes closed and the white forms to the left of him may be explained by what Vaughan wrote in his Journal on May 2nd 1945:
'I saw two men striding forward across a sown field flinging out handfuls of white powder from a basket slung round their necks ... I had the sensation of becoming entirely a part of the whole situation ... I could feel the seeds trickling through my fingers. Then the spaciousness of the field and the striding forward into the wind and the need to keep the powder out of the eyes' (see K. Vaughan, Journal and Drawings 1939-1965, London, 1966, p. 103).
During the war the constraints of rationing and the demands of army life restricted the availability of art supplies. Here however, Vaughan's confident handling of pen and ink, gouache and wax-resist not only demonstrates his considerable facility but also transcends the limitations of his mundane materials.

G.H.