Keith Vaughan

Julius Fleischmann
Mr & Mrs Nick Lott
Anthony Hepworth Fine Art, Bath, where acquired by the present owner, 13th May 1999

London, Leicester Galleries, Keith Vaughan: Paintings, October 1953, cat. no.7;
London, Olympia, Keith Vaughan, 26th February - 3rd March 2002, cat. no.431;
Bath, Victoria Art Gallery, Keith Vaughan, Figure and Landscape, 3rd February - 25th March 2007.

Keith Vaughan: A Retrospective Exhibition, exh. cat., 1962, unpaginated, illustrated pl.xxvii;
Anthony Hepworth & Ian Massey, Keith Vaughan, The Mature Oils 1946-1977, Sansom & Company, Bristol, 2012, cat. no.163, p.86, illustrated.

Sound board. There is a small pin hole in the extreme bottom left hand corner. There are two vertical lines of minor in-filling visible to the extreme top edge, and a smaller, further to the top of the extreme right hand edge. Elsewhere there is fine craquelure to the black roof in the upper left hand quadrant, and fine reticulation to the centre of the composition between the two cottages; to the dark greet area in the right hand side of the composition and to the two chimneys of the right hand cottage. Elsewhere there is minor studio detritus and very minor surface dirt, but this excepting the work appears in good overall condition. Ultraviolet light reveals fluorescence and probable retouchings to the aforementioned areas of slight in-filling in the sky, with couple of further, smaller spots also appearing to the sky. Housed in a thick, dark wooden frame. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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In 1949 Vaughan visited Brittany on a cycling tour, looking for new subjects to paint. He cycled round Finisterre and stayed in small villages and hamlets, making drawings as he went; many still exist. He steeped himself in Gide’s journal as he travelled and wrote in his own as he went along. What he found there came as a surprise to him. Instead of a sun-drenched landscape full of colourful local inhabitants, he discovered a harsh, dour but nevertheless dramatic landscape. On his return to London he produced a series of paintings depicting the stone cottages, local villagers, harbour scenes, fishermen and lobster catchers, in greys, blacks, whites and ochres (see Fishermen and Bathers, (1951), Finisterre: Group of Fishermen,(1951) etc.).

In Poalgoazec (Finisterre) Vaughan has succeeded in creating a tightly constructed and harmonious composition. The formal arrangement, with the blocked-in shapes of the roof tops, chimneys and windows, and the sprung arcs (probably denoting upturned fishing boats), is typical of his tough, uncompromising style at this time. His economical use of colour and thick application of pigment, parallel the harsh, colourless environment that he encountered in Brittany after the war.

He wrote in his journal:

'Returned from France with little regret. Enjoyed much but without the whole of me. Saw France for what it was – a setting, without the allure of its imagined romantic possibilities. Was faintly repelled by the noise, stridency, smells which hitherto had been veiled by romanticism' (Keith Vaughan, unpublished journal entry, 24th September 1949. Vol. 33).

We are grateful to Gerard Hastings, author of Drawing to a Close: The Final Journals of Keith Vaughan (Pagham Press) and Keith Vaughan the Photographs (Pagham Press), for his assistance in compiling the catalogue note for the present work.