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Lot Essay
This was one of several oil paintings found in Vaughan’s studio in 1978. It remained with his executor and friend, Dr Patrick Woodcock until his death in 2002. Probably dating from the mid-to late 1960s, the composition contains several characteristics of the paintings from that period: cautious and harmonious use of colour, formal equilibrium and an economy of means.
Built-up and blocked-in forms are locked into position at the centre of the compositional arrangement, while a lone slab of pigment has anchored itself to the extreme right edge. Evidence of additional geometric shapes may be detected breathing through the mushroom-coloured layers of over-paint, revealing to us previous pictorial decisions. This refining process was typical of Vaughan’s working method as he attempted to weld and bond his forms into a satisfying unity while, simultaneously, retaining a record of each stage of the painting’s manufacture.
Vaughan was always reluctant to relinquish the object and generally pulled back from total abstraction, preferring to inject his imagery with a sense of simultaneous figurative and formal ambiguity. Nevertheless, works such as this are as close as he came to achieving a completely abstract image. He discussed his approach in an interview with Dr Tony Carter in 1963:
'I simply do this because I feel a compulsion to do it. I don’t attach any great merit to the subject. Indeed, what the subject of one’s painting is, is very arbitrary and beside the point. I tend, in my own sense, to relate my painting very much more to music, to make something that sounds right, that goes together, that fits, which has a sort of unity and harmony and total resolution about it. I think that, if you succeed in doing that, in no matter what medium, you automatically make some sort of comment on the human situation. The mere fact that one is doing semi-recognisable figures in semi-recognisable landscapes does not really matter very much. One might just as well be dealing with abstract forms, except that in my case I don’t happen to feel that way … The thing is that if you make an orderly resolution to the particular problem you set out with, you automatically make some sort of comment on the human situation. You have demonstrated that order is possible, in art if not in life. But I have never claimed to be making profound statements on the human situation. I am trying to sort out a personal conflict which I suppose is shared by a certain number of people'.
We are very grateful to Gerard Hastings, author of Paradise Found and Lost: Keith Vaughan in Essex, 2016, published by Pagham Press in association with the Keith Vaughan Society, for preparing this catalogue entry.
Built-up and blocked-in forms are locked into position at the centre of the compositional arrangement, while a lone slab of pigment has anchored itself to the extreme right edge. Evidence of additional geometric shapes may be detected breathing through the mushroom-coloured layers of over-paint, revealing to us previous pictorial decisions. This refining process was typical of Vaughan’s working method as he attempted to weld and bond his forms into a satisfying unity while, simultaneously, retaining a record of each stage of the painting’s manufacture.
Vaughan was always reluctant to relinquish the object and generally pulled back from total abstraction, preferring to inject his imagery with a sense of simultaneous figurative and formal ambiguity. Nevertheless, works such as this are as close as he came to achieving a completely abstract image. He discussed his approach in an interview with Dr Tony Carter in 1963:
'I simply do this because I feel a compulsion to do it. I don’t attach any great merit to the subject. Indeed, what the subject of one’s painting is, is very arbitrary and beside the point. I tend, in my own sense, to relate my painting very much more to music, to make something that sounds right, that goes together, that fits, which has a sort of unity and harmony and total resolution about it. I think that, if you succeed in doing that, in no matter what medium, you automatically make some sort of comment on the human situation. The mere fact that one is doing semi-recognisable figures in semi-recognisable landscapes does not really matter very much. One might just as well be dealing with abstract forms, except that in my case I don’t happen to feel that way … The thing is that if you make an orderly resolution to the particular problem you set out with, you automatically make some sort of comment on the human situation. You have demonstrated that order is possible, in art if not in life. But I have never claimed to be making profound statements on the human situation. I am trying to sort out a personal conflict which I suppose is shared by a certain number of people'.
We are very grateful to Gerard Hastings, author of Paradise Found and Lost: Keith Vaughan in Essex, 2016, published by Pagham Press in association with the Keith Vaughan Society, for preparing this catalogue entry.