Keith Vaughan

(British, 1912-1977)

High Easter 43 x 40.5 cm. (16 7/8 x 15 7/8 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
With Matthiesen Gallery, London, where acquired by
Private Collection, U.S.A.
Their sale; Christie's, London, 9 November 1990, where acquired by
Sir John Craven (1940-2022)

Exhibited
London, Matthiesen Gallery, Group Exhibition, 1962 (catalogue untraced)

Literature
Anthony Hepworth and Ian Massey, Keith Vaughan: The Mature Oils 1946-1977, Sansom & Company, Bristol, 2012, p.123, cat.no.AH322
Gerard Hastings, Paradise Found and Lost, Pagham Press, London, 2016, p. 54

The small village of High Easter, not far from Chelmsford, is a quiet, historic place which lay on Vaughan's weekend route to his country house on Harrow Hill Lane, near Toppesfield. The place inspired four of his oil paintings. The present work, which was the first, dates from 1960 and the others were painted in 1961, 1968 and 1972. It is difficult to know what topographical motifs originally attracted him to this Essex village since the imagery and style of the four versions differ immensely. Professor John Ball, who owned the third version, pointed out that the titles which Vaughan gave his oil paintings were sometimes allocated once the work was completed. Furthermore, some titles were simply derived from quaint and eccentric place names. The playwright Sir Peter Shaffer corroborated this quixotic approach to naming work. He viewed the second version of High Easter, in 1961 at Vaughan's studio, not long after he had completed it: 'I remember looking at a particularly handsome canvas – quite large – and asked him what it was called. He said it was called 'High Easter.' 'What a marvellous title – such a lovely, poetic phrase,' I said. He replied, 'Oh, I didn't make the title up. It's just a place name.' (Sir Peter Shaffer in conversation with Gerard Hastings, August 2008).

The composition of High Easter initially appears as an indecipherable jumble of unrelated, geometric shapes tumbling across the picture plane. However, each has its origin in the observed world and has been filtered, broken up and reassembled in plastic terms. For example, the darkest forms denote a series of shadowy, open doors and windows set against the pale blue walls of barns and farmhouses. Triangular gable ends and sloping, gambrel roofs merge with squared-off patches of grass which act as persuasive reminders (rather than direct illustrations) of the character of the village of High Easter and its surrounding landscape. At the upper right, a dark blue area of sky closes off the scene. Much of Vaughan's visual language is derived from the Cubist work of Braque and Picasso – and especially so in the final version of High Easter. However, having recently seen the work of Nicholas de Staël at the Matthiesen Gallery in London, Vaughan's awareness of the painted surface as an expressive element in itself, had started to develop. It was also around this period, too, that his focus of interest shifted away from descriptive representation towards reconciling the figurative and abstract qualities within his paintings. What emerged was a new eloquence and sensuality in his handling of oil paint.

Eight years before painting High Easter, in an unpublished series of studio notes, Vaughan addressed his approach to building up a sense of pictorial space on the surface of the painting without resorting to the use of traditional linear perspective:

3 May 1952: Particles of landscape which detach themselves float out into space – continuing a foreground plane against a distant one. Floating particles of landscape create a vivid sense of space...Small floating squares and rectangles. They might equally well be leaves or scraps of paper. This is unimportant. Their identity will be determined by their circumstances.

The flattened forms and overlapping planes are calibrated to draw the viewer into the heart of the composition. Alternating lights and darks push and pull, advance and retreat against one another, suggesting pictorial distance or closeness. The handling of the paint is characteristically animated as his pigment is dragged and smeared in a tactile fashion over the panel, with directional brushstrokes and clear gestures further enlivening the painted surface.

We are grateful to Gerard Hastings for compiling this catalogue entry.