KEITH VAUGHAN | Red Figures

Acquired directly from the Artist by Benita Armstrong
Her sale, Sotheby's London, 23rd November 1994, lot 80, where acquired by Geoffrey Beene
His sale, Sotheby's New York, 23rd September 2005, lot 28
Private Collection, Palm Beach, from whom acquired by a Private Collection, Miami
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Anthony Hepworth and Ian Massey, Keith Vaughan: The Mature Oils 1946-1977, Sanson & Company Ltd, Bristol, 2012, cat. no.AH443, illustrated p.158. 

The board appears to be sound. There is some frame abrasion to all four edges, most noticeable at the right edge. There are two losses at the left and right edges, not visible in the present mount. There are a number of further nicks and tiny losses to the other edges, largely not visible in the present mount. There is a small amount of reticulation most evident in the central passage between the two groups of figures, to the right above the left hand figure's head and between this figure's legs. There appears to be some bloom in places, notably above the right hand group of figures, and in one or two further locations. There is a fleck of studio detritus to the extreme lower right corner. Subject to the above, the work appears to be in very good overall condition. Inspection under ultra violet light reveals a varnish which makes it difficult to read the condition of the work. The work is held within a simple wooden frame. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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We are grateful to Gerard Hastings, author of Awkward Artefacts: The 'Erotic Fantasies' of Keith Vaughan, published by Pagham Press in 2017, for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work and preparing the below note: In Red Figures, Vaughan generates a tension, both physical and psychological, between the single figure at the left of the composition, and the group at the right. There is certainly a narrative suggestion concerning isolation and exclusion between the separate groups. They occupy an undisclosed autumnal landscape and, by the use of largely monochromatic colouring and handling of the pigment, Vaughan marries the figures with the setting. The treatment is highly worked and texturally varied and great pains have been taken to build up the pictorial surface with rich impastos and carefully calculated brushwork. The result produces both an expressive ‘skin’ to the figures as well as a fleshy, tactile effect to the overall painting.

 

By now Vaughan had begun to distill anatomical parts down to simplified shapes and enclosed, formal profiles. This amalgamation of individual bodies into a single, conglomeration of forms was a pictorial device that Vaughan was developing from around 1960, using a wet-in-wet technique. The melding of limbs and torsos into a cohesive unity was extensively explored in several major figure paintings, completed in the same year, including Seventh Assembly of Figure (Nile Group) and Eighth Assembly of Figures. The year before Vaughan painted Red Figures he explained his technical approach:

I usually set a colour and tonal key first of all. That is to say, put down areas of tones and colours without any particular reference to the figuration into which they are going to develop, but I distribute them over the canvas to interrupt its whiteness and set up a field of activity. Then, having got these landmarks or footholds as it were, I let them develop according to what seems to be their potential energy or structure. This results in an all-over design of broken, dispersed forms which begin to assemble, according to their colour, into areas of mass or space. The problem is being to find an image which has a certain mystery and ambiguity of reference yet with complete formal authority as to its presence. I have been doing a lot of small panels about 17” x 16”, of the size that you can completely comprehend at arm’s length. By that I mean you can see the whole area and its component parts without having to move away from it. These I have started on tacky liquid ground of a particular colour…and then painted it while still wet, which is a very exciting technical activity because it allows great tactile sensitiveness and a very rapid development of forms…I don’t think many painters employ it today, but it is a perfectly orthodox oil painting technique. The whole technique of painting wet in wet in Rubens time was a highly involved and very intricate sort of training. What it means is that each time you touch the canvas with the brush, so you alter the value and the colour of the part you are painting…you alter the mark, you alter the form, you alter the colour and you alter the value. It’s very exhilarating but I find it is only possible to do it at the moment on a small scale. (Unpublished interview with Dr. Tony Carter, 1963)