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Lot Essay
Vaughan originally painted Landscape in 1966 but he returned to it again a decade later to rework it and make significant revisions. It was not unusual for him to revisit earlier paintings and alter pictorial qualities that dissatisfied him. This might include modifying the surface texture, adjusting the composition or, in this case, removing unwanted figures from the scene. The original title was Landscape with Figures and Vaughan has all but obliterated them, presumably satisfied that the landscape and architectural elements were strong enough to stand alone.
Two years before he painted the original version, he had purchased a row of derelict cottages in the heart of the Essex countryside and set about renovating them. The surrounding farms and villages held a particular fascination for him.
‘Vaughan’s visual distillations of the Essex landscape purposefully reduce it to something concentrated and visually persuasive. His picture-making process entailed immersing himself in nature and familiarising himself with it to the point that its memory entered his nervous system sufficiently to coalesce into a painting. He took lengthy walks and recorded features of the terrain along the way with his camera and in his sketchbooks. He also drove around local villages, pulling over in his car to make preparatory drawings and studies. These aides-mémoire assisted in his process of refining and transforming the landscape. Memory and recollection were interconnected with optical scrutiny:
'Imagination is based always on observation; it is a summary of the evidence of the senses, intensified in the memory and carried forward one stage into the future where it stands as a revelation of the truth not yet achieved by the slower process of nature ... the point of value lies in whether our own experience is enlarged by the distortion’ (G. Hastings, Paradise Found and Lost: Keith Vaughan in Essex, London, 2016, p. 45).
At the left of the composition we can make out a gable end of a barn and a cluster of agricultural buildings. The composition is clearly defined between the ochres and burnt Siennas below, indicating the land, and a series of cobalt and Prussian blues above, representing the sky. Perhaps the fluttering foliage-like forms suggest an autumnal copse or small woodland.
We are very grateful to Gerard Hastings, author of Paradise Found and Lost: Keith Vaughan in Essex, published by Pagham Press in association with the Keith Vaughan Society, for preparing this catalogue entry.
Two years before he painted the original version, he had purchased a row of derelict cottages in the heart of the Essex countryside and set about renovating them. The surrounding farms and villages held a particular fascination for him.
‘Vaughan’s visual distillations of the Essex landscape purposefully reduce it to something concentrated and visually persuasive. His picture-making process entailed immersing himself in nature and familiarising himself with it to the point that its memory entered his nervous system sufficiently to coalesce into a painting. He took lengthy walks and recorded features of the terrain along the way with his camera and in his sketchbooks. He also drove around local villages, pulling over in his car to make preparatory drawings and studies. These aides-mémoire assisted in his process of refining and transforming the landscape. Memory and recollection were interconnected with optical scrutiny:
'Imagination is based always on observation; it is a summary of the evidence of the senses, intensified in the memory and carried forward one stage into the future where it stands as a revelation of the truth not yet achieved by the slower process of nature ... the point of value lies in whether our own experience is enlarged by the distortion’ (G. Hastings, Paradise Found and Lost: Keith Vaughan in Essex, London, 2016, p. 45).
At the left of the composition we can make out a gable end of a barn and a cluster of agricultural buildings. The composition is clearly defined between the ochres and burnt Siennas below, indicating the land, and a series of cobalt and Prussian blues above, representing the sky. Perhaps the fluttering foliage-like forms suggest an autumnal copse or small woodland.
We are very grateful to Gerard Hastings, author of Paradise Found and Lost: Keith Vaughan in Essex, published by Pagham Press in association with the Keith Vaughan Society, for preparing this catalogue entry.