
Penny Day
Head of UK and Ireland
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Head of UK and Ireland

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Private Collection, U.K.
By the early 1970s Vaughan was, perhaps, the leading exponent of gouache painting in Britain. He frequently combined Indian ink, oil based pastels and alternating opaque layers and diluted washes of gouache, to create a varied surface. In the present work the human and landscape forms are distilled and executed with complete confidence. However, as Vaughan grew older, painting became an exhausting, but nonetheless, compulsive activity, which sapped a great deal of his energy:
'His 1973-4 series are examples of bravura painting and boast a dazzling alla prima approach. Nevertheless he remained profoundly sceptical of his own working methods: 'Impossible to sustain concentrated work for more than two hours in the morning due to bad procedure and working methods. I rely on a blind creative drive to set me going and to keep me going. Naturally that decreases with age.' (Philip Vann and Gerard Hastings, Keith Vaughan, Lund Humphries, Farnham & Burlington, 2012, p.174).
We are grateful to Gerard Hastings for compiling this catalogue entry. His book, Keith Vaughan: The Photographs, has recently been published by Pagham Press.