Keith Vaughan

Acquired directly from the artist in 1962 for £65 by Robert Thurston Dart, by whom bequeathed to the present owner

London, The Arts Council of Great Britain, Keith Vaughan, 1957, cat. no.5 (29);
London, Whitechapel Gallery, Keith Vaughan: Retrospective Exhibition, March - April 1962, cat. no.29.

The sheet is sound and is undulating slightly. It has slipped in its mount. There are two minor tears along the edge in the upper left corner, and a small tear along the bottom edge in the lower left quadrant. There are pinholes in all four corners and dotted along the edges, and a crease near the centre of the left edge. There are some media marks in the lower left quadrant but otherwise the paint surface is in good overall condition. Held under glass in a wooden frame with a white canvas mount, unexamined out of frame. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5381 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Keith Vaughan found himself at the beginning of the war 'faced at the age of twenty-seven with what then seemed the likelihood of imminent extinction before I had properly got started' (John Murray, Keith Vaughan Journals 1939-1977, Preface, p.xvii). As a conscientious objector Vaughan joined the St John's Ambulance and in 1941 was conscripted into the Pioneer Corps where the work was physically exhausting. But in this new company Vaughan discovered a like-minded group of intellectuals, many of them graduates, who ignited a hunger for learning and creativity in the artist. Vaughan wrote in his journal, 'I am growing, changing, growing deeper and younger when I should be growing older.' (Malcolm Yorke, Keith Vaughan: His Life and Work, Constable, London, 1990, p.62)

In the present work, Vaughan depicts a peaceful young man asleep on the bottom bunk as a skeletal and hunched figure appears to drape a sheet over him. The scene is dream-like and surreal when compared with A Barrack-room - Sleep (Coll. Imperial War Museum), where the figure on the top bunk is muscular and anchors the scene in the real world.

The first owner of the present work, Robert Thurston Dart, was a musicologist and conductor, and a leading figure in the revival of interest in Early Music in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. Many of his students went on to distinguished careers, including Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Christopher Hogwood and Michael Nyman (see also lot 107 from the same collection).