Keith Vaughan

Acquired by the present owner's father in the late 1960s and thence by descent

1965 was Vaughan’s finest gouache year. He produced dozens of works on paper created with his preferred ‘volatile medium’ of Indian ink, gouache and oil pastel. His subjects, as in the present work, were generally groupings and gatherings of figures in darkly atmospheric surroundings. Once the ink and gouache had dried, Vaughan worked the image with oil pastels (see the mushroom-coloured figure) which he had discovered in America in 1959. His journal for January/February 1965 informs us:

'Sunday 17 January: Not much to say. Seven gouaches completed since beginning of the year which has at least broken the routine.

Monday 25 January: Continue with a series of gouaches on the theme of violence none of them yet very successful, but the beginnings of something.

Friday 26 February:

Gouaches started sometime over Christmas, now amount to about 35. Purely compulsive. I dread stopping. Vinegar in the water makes the ink precipitate. Stings the skin.'

Gerard Hastings