PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE LATE PETER ADAM
KEITH VAUGHAN (BRITISH, 1912-1977)
Two Seated Figures
signed 'Keith Vaughan' (lower right); titled and dated 'Two Seated Figures/1955' (to a backboard)
gouache and indian ink
24.7 x 19 cm. (9 3/4 x 7 1/2 in.)

Provenance
The artist, from whom acquired by
Peter Adam (1929-2019), thence by family descent

Exhibited
Olympia, London, Keith Vaughan, 26 Feb-3 Mar 2002, cat no.KV280

We are grateful to Gerard Hastings and Anthony Hepworth for their assistance in cataloguing this lot.

1955 was an unusual year for Vaughan. He completed only fifteen oil paintings (fourteen of which were landscape subjects) and attended to his journal on only three occasions. His entry for February 1, perhaps, explains why this may have been the case:

"Am not conscious of having worked really hard for about a year. Yet I have today delivered 70 gouaches to the Leicester Gallery & a show of about 55 works opens in N.Y. Alternate between feeling I have come to the end of myself as an artist & feeling I am just about to do my best work. Vow also to try & live & especially more outwardly."

It seems that Vaughan spent the year working with the medium of gouache. The Leicester Galleries held an exhibition consisting entirely of his gouaches and Durlacher Brothers Gallery in New York exhibited around twenty of them. At the time, gouache was a medium generally associated with the designer’s studio, but Vaughan, extended its expressive range and became, perhaps, its greatest exponent in Britain in the post-war years.

The foreground figure is probably derived from a life drawing made at the Central School of Art, where Vaughan was teaching. As is often the case with his domestic subjects, the mood of Two Seated Figures echoes the tensions which he was experiencing in his relationship with his partner Ramsay McClure. They met in 1948 and moved to a flat on Belsize Park four years later. Long periods of smouldering tension and resentment were common as Vaughan tried to work and Ramsay tip-toed around him on eggshells.

We are grateful to Gerard Hastings for compiling this catalogue entry.