Keith Vaughan

The Estate of the Artist
Dr. Patrick Woodcock
Private Collection

London, Gallery 27, Vaughan Drawing Retrospective, September 2010, cat. no.14.

Not examined out of the frame, the sheet appears to be attached to the backing card in several places but not laid down. The upper edge of the sheet is perforated, in keeping with the Artist's materials. There are some slight handling marks visible around the edges of the sheet, and there is a light crease in the lower left quadrant. The sheet is slightly time stained throughout, most noticeably around the extreme edges, with three lighter marks which may correspond to old adhesive tabs. There is a faint impression around the edges, possibly from a previous mounting arrangement. There is an extremely minor stain in the lower left corner. The work is float mounted and held within a simple wooden frame 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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Vaughan’s essential aim when drawing was to capture the essence of his figure subject. His pictorial challenge was a formal one: how to arrive at a visually satisfying statement without resorting to mere illustration or illusionistic reproduction. The solution lay in making a paraphrase, rather than a comprehensive reproduction, of nature and drawing played a crucial part in this process of pictorial reduction. He cultivated a particular quality of line to delineate human forms and suggest corporeal volume; it is serrated, almost nervous and made with jagged strokes of the pencil. Drawing enabled Vaughan to reveal the fundamental character of a subject and refine his picture-making process.

We are grateful to Gerard Hastings for compiling these notes. His latest book, Awkward Artefacts: The ‘Erotic Fantasies’ of Keith Vaughan: 1940-1960, is published by Pagham Press in April.