Keith Vaughan

Acquired by the late owner by the 1980s

The sheet has been laid down to backing card by the artist and the composition has been extended slightly, this is not visible in the current mount. The sheet appears sound. When viewed out of the frame, there is an l-shaped piece of card adhered in each of the four corners, presumably as a framing or compositional aid, and there are also traces of old adhesive along the upper edge of the sheet. There is some very light surface dirt. The work appears to be in good overall condition. The work is presented in a simple wooden frame with a fabric slip, held under glass. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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We are grateful to Gerard Hastings, whose latest book, Paradise Gained and Lost: Keith Vaughan in Essex, will be published in the spring by Pagham Press, for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.

The present work is the original drawing for the lithograph of 1949 by the Artist of the same title, included as an illustration for Arthur Rimbaud's Une Saison en Enfer, Lehmann, 1949.

We are grateful to Gerard Hastings, whose latest book, Paradise Gained and Lost: Keith Vaughan in Essex, will be published in the spring by Pagham Press, for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.

The poetry of Rimbaud formed a central part of Vaughan’s literary diet and, being fluent in French, he read the prose poems in their original language. He also made numerous drawings illustrating the text and, in the 1970s, painted a series of gouaches inspired by the young poet’s lines and phrases. The present work is one of his very first attempts at visualising Rimbaud’s work and was made in 1949 for an illustrated edition of Une Saison en Enfer, published by John Lehmann. For this new translation by Norman Cameron, Vaughan supplied eight coloured lithographs. The inscription, at the upper part of the composition, is the first line of the poem, which reads:

From my ancestors, the Gauls, I have pale blue eyes, a narrow brain, and awkwardness in combat. I think my clothes are as barbaric as theirs. But I don’t butter my hair.

This is a highly evocative drawing made with pen and ink, wax crayons, inky washes and touches of gouache. In many ways it sums up both the style and the imagery associated with British Neo-Romanticism with its dark, brooding, monochromatic landscape and desolate atmosphere. Graham Sutherland’s lithographs for Francis Quarles’ Hieroglyphikes on the Life on Man, published by Poetry London in 1943, have undoubtedly influenced Vaughan’s use of spiky line and improvised drawing style.

In his final days Rimbaud’s poems continued to absorb Vaughan. Three pages before his final journal entry and suicide note, he wrote:

One of the most flattering things which has happened to me over the past few years is to have three of my Rimbaud gouaches bought by Professor [Cecil Arthur] Hackett. I first met him at Victor Waddington’s party where I was showing the first of the drawings – ‘Antique.’ I was introduced to him and of course had no idea who he was. Much to my surprise he asked me if ‘Antique’ has any reference to Rimbaud’s poem of that name. I replied that it had and managed to quote fairly accurately the lines which had particularly inspired me. A few minutes later I noticed a red spot go on the frame and he had bought it. Shortly afterwards he sent me his small monograph on Rimbaud (Rimbaud, Hillary House, New York, 1957), and I realised that not only was he Professor of French at Southampton University but a Rimbaud specialist who had written several books on the subject. His understanding seemed exactly like my own. When subsequently he bought two more of the later gouaches last year from Leslie I felt that my instinctive reactions to Rimbaud were not as wayward and bizarre as I feared they might be. (Keith Vaughan, Journals, September 8, 1977).

Gerard Hastings