.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The male nude figure forms the core of Vaughan’s work and life-drawing was at the heart of his creative expression. In his figure drawings he communicates how limbs are articulated and how figures move, pass through and inhabit space. Contours and profiles are invested with volume and animation while simultaneously retaining the planar integrity of the page.
Vaughan accumulated a wide vocabulary of graphic marks including novel ways to shade, hatch and delineate form. Some of the most expressive drawings of the 1960s possess a surety of line and a feather-light sensitivity in both subject and execution. Problems and difficulties that were encountered in the process of painting rarely presented themselves in Vaughan’s drawing activities: ‘There must be some way of using the brush and colour with the same spontaneity as the pencil. I should have found this out by now. What a difference it would make if painting just went along, with the same total involvement as drawing.’ (Keith Vaughan, unpublished Journals, January 6, 1964).
Several exhibitions of Vaughan’s drawings were held during the 1960s. In 1963 he exhibited drawings at the Biennale in Sao Paolo and three further drawing exhibitions took place between 1967 and 1969 in London and Manchester. While teaching at the Slade he worked directly from the model, making life-drawing demonstrations for his students and the present example may well be one of these. He also worked from the model in his own studio. Noel Barber noted Vaughan ‘paints nudes from memorised observation. Once or twice a month a model poses in his neat working-room…. the model’s appearance enters, as it were, the artist’s consciousness in the form of drawings.’ (Noel Barber, Conversations with Painters, Collins, 1964).
We are very grateful to Gerard Hastings for his assistance in cataloguing the present lot. Gerard Hastings is the author of Drawing to a Close: the Final Journals of Keith Vaughan, Pagham Press, 2012, and Keith Vaughan: The Photographs, Pagham Press, 2013.
Vaughan accumulated a wide vocabulary of graphic marks including novel ways to shade, hatch and delineate form. Some of the most expressive drawings of the 1960s possess a surety of line and a feather-light sensitivity in both subject and execution. Problems and difficulties that were encountered in the process of painting rarely presented themselves in Vaughan’s drawing activities: ‘There must be some way of using the brush and colour with the same spontaneity as the pencil. I should have found this out by now. What a difference it would make if painting just went along, with the same total involvement as drawing.’ (Keith Vaughan, unpublished Journals, January 6, 1964).
Several exhibitions of Vaughan’s drawings were held during the 1960s. In 1963 he exhibited drawings at the Biennale in Sao Paolo and three further drawing exhibitions took place between 1967 and 1969 in London and Manchester. While teaching at the Slade he worked directly from the model, making life-drawing demonstrations for his students and the present example may well be one of these. He also worked from the model in his own studio. Noel Barber noted Vaughan ‘paints nudes from memorised observation. Once or twice a month a model poses in his neat working-room…. the model’s appearance enters, as it were, the artist’s consciousness in the form of drawings.’ (Noel Barber, Conversations with Painters, Collins, 1964).
We are very grateful to Gerard Hastings for his assistance in cataloguing the present lot. Gerard Hastings is the author of Drawing to a Close: the Final Journals of Keith Vaughan, Pagham Press, 2012, and Keith Vaughan: The Photographs, Pagham Press, 2013.