Landscape with sheep and shepherd

In his foreword to the 1944 exhibition, Vaughan explains the background to the drawings and how he combined being an artist with a soldier, 'On New Year's Day, 1941, the first thing that went into my brand new army haversack was the largest drawing book it would accommodate and an unbreakable bottle of black ink ... Instead of a canvas on a chest-of-drawers, I now spent my off-duty hours with a pad on my knee on my bed in a barrack room. For a year I drew the raw material that was in front of me'. By 1942 he had added to his materials one or two more bottles of ink, two pots of gouache and a few crayons. He was able to travel with the army and the itinerary included Wiltshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire. The present work, no. 15 in the 1944 exhibition, is included in a section entitled Derbyshire Landscape, as Vaughan continues to explain, 'These pictures are a result of that tour and a reflection of the life that accompanied it. Moving from place to place, staying often only a matter of days one was subjected to a constant battery of impressions, yet could gain neither the leisure nor the detachment patiently to explore all the possibilities ... Derbyshire was rain and rock and green vegetation; an enlarged rock garden with an aqueous inner illumination and the feeling of a simple lyrical quality in the life of the people' (see K. Vaughan, exhibition catalogue, Paintings by Robert Bevan and drawings by Keith Vaughan, London, Lefevre Gallery, 1944, pp. 8-10).