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拍品專文
The theme of labour often appears in Vaughan’s subjects, especially during the years following the war. He depicted workmen in both gouaches and oil paintings and also filled sketchbooks with pencil studies of labourers, manual workers, farmers, railway porters, newspaper sellers, builders, road-workers, gardeners, machine operators and coalmen.
The present work, one of a series of images relating to the activities of a steelworks, generates poetic associations between the sulphurous industrial environment and more traditional visions of hell. Moreover these images stand as notable social documents and in this respect are related to Graham Sutherland’s war-time gouaches made in Cardiff and Swansea. Vaughan painted this image only four years after the war, during a period of significant optimism and patriotism in Britain when toil and labour were associated with progress and regeneration. Achievements in industry, engineering and manufacturing were celebrated the following year at The Festival of Britain, for which Vaughan painted the interior of the Dome of Discovery.
The drawing, probably completed in situ, demonstrates a spontaneous and direct handling of materials. Gouache is mixed and diluted with Indian ink to produce Vaughan’s characteristic frothing textures that equate with the smoke-filled and sulphurous atmosphere of the factory. More formal pictorial accents are supplied by pen and ink drawing.
We are very grateful to Gerard Hastings for his assistance in cataloguing the present lot. Gerard Hastings is the author of Drawing to a Close: the Final Journals of Keith Vaughan, Pagham Press, 2012, and Keith Vaughan: The Photographs, Pagham Press, 2013.
The present work, one of a series of images relating to the activities of a steelworks, generates poetic associations between the sulphurous industrial environment and more traditional visions of hell. Moreover these images stand as notable social documents and in this respect are related to Graham Sutherland’s war-time gouaches made in Cardiff and Swansea. Vaughan painted this image only four years after the war, during a period of significant optimism and patriotism in Britain when toil and labour were associated with progress and regeneration. Achievements in industry, engineering and manufacturing were celebrated the following year at The Festival of Britain, for which Vaughan painted the interior of the Dome of Discovery.
The drawing, probably completed in situ, demonstrates a spontaneous and direct handling of materials. Gouache is mixed and diluted with Indian ink to produce Vaughan’s characteristic frothing textures that equate with the smoke-filled and sulphurous atmosphere of the factory. More formal pictorial accents are supplied by pen and ink drawing.
We are very grateful to Gerard Hastings for his assistance in cataloguing the present lot. Gerard Hastings is the author of Drawing to a Close: the Final Journals of Keith Vaughan, Pagham Press, 2012, and Keith Vaughan: The Photographs, Pagham Press, 2013.