Modern British & Irish Art Day Auction

Keith Vaughan

Recruits Sleeping - Bulford Camp

Artist's Resale Right

Estimate

5,000 - 7,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

Keith Vaughan

1912 – 1977

Recruits Sleeping – Bulford Camp

signed Keith Vaughan and dated /41 (lower right); also titled, dated 1941 and inscribed (on a label attached to the reverse of the frame)

gouache and pen and ink on paper

unframed (window): 13.5 by 21.5cm.; 5¼ by 8½in.

framed: 27 by 34cm.; 10½ by 13½in.

Executed in 1941, and reworked in the 1960s.

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.

Gifted from Carol Kroch to the present owner, 1979

Vaughan painted the present work while stationed at Bulford Camp in Wiltshire, during the Second World War. At the end of 1941, he spent the winter under canvas while building Nissan huts. Here he captures the dank, womb-like conditions inside tents as he depicts his fellow recruits sleeping between training exercises. He wrote in his journal: 'At six o'clock the guard's cane smacks the taut canvas of the tent. It is pitch dark. Nobody moves but everyone is instantly awake and weighing the agony of getting up against the penalty of staying in the warm cocoon of blankets. The guard can be heard in the distance thrashing the canvas of the other tents. Presently a tremor passes through the tent like the disturbance of sediment at the bottom of a heated flask. A hand emerges from its blanket and gropes for matches to light a candle. Sleepy but emphatic curses break out.' Keith Vaughan, Journals & Drawings 1939-1965, Alan Ross, London, 1966, p. 48.

Gerard Hastings