Modern British & Irish Art Day Auction
Modern British & Irish Art Day Auction
Keith Vaughan
Two Figures
Session begins in
November 15, 01:30 PM GMT
Estimate
7,000 - 8,000 GBP
Bid
6,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Keith Vaughan
1912 - 1977
Two Figures
signed Keith Vaughan (lower left)
pen and ink, ink wash, gouache and oil pastel on paper
unframed: 25.5 by 20.5cm.; 10 by 8in.
framed: 46.5 by 39.5cm.; 18 by 15½in.
Executed in 1958.
We are grateful to Gerard Hastings for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of these works. His two books Awkward Artefacts: ‘The Erotic Fantasies’ of Keith Vaughan and Paradise Found and Lost: Keith Vaughan in Essex have just been re-issued by Pagham Press and may be purchased from the Keith Vaughan Society.
John Weston
Private Collection, LA, from whom acquired by the present owner
Two Figures is typical of Vaughan’s works on paper of the late 1950s, when he created increasingly complex figural compositions. Typically intimate in scale, the figures fill the picture space, their limbs stretching out to the edges, intertwined and delineated by overlapping gestures and anatomical forms.
Whenever working with stiffer oil pigments on canvas proved problematic, or if he required a freer form of expression, Vaughan turned to painting with a mixture of gouache, Indian ink, waxy crayons and oil pastels. These works on paper were often rapidly produced in the manner of an improvisation and a sketch-like freshness is retained in the finished image. The blank paper surface was often employed to supply the lightest, fleshy tones, as it does here.
John Weston (1932-2023 ) was an award winning author and LGBTQ advocate in the US.
Gerard Hastings
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