Christopher Dawson
Head of Department
Lot 6AR
Keith Vaughan(British, 1912-1977)Three Figures and Cane Chair 27 x 32 cm. (10 5/8 x 12 5/8 in.)
19 June 2024, 15:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £20,480 inc. premium
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Keith Vaughan (British, 1912-1977)
Three Figures and Cane Chair
titled and dated '3 Figures & Cane Chair 1956' (on an artist's label attached to the backboard)
gouache, pen and ink
27 x 32 cm. (10 5/8 x 12 5/8 in.)
titled and dated '3 Figures & Cane Chair 1956' (on an artist's label attached to the backboard)
gouache, pen and ink
27 x 32 cm. (10 5/8 x 12 5/8 in.)
Footnotes
Provenance
With The Redfern Gallery, London, 11 November 1966, where acquired by
Peter Viti
During the 1950s Vaughan's international reputation had grown. Seven gouaches had been included in an exhibition in Buenos Aires in 1950, the Brooklyn Museum showed others in 1953 and Durlacher Brothers of New York exhibited further gouaches in 1952, 1955 and 1957. By now, he had established himself as one of Britain's foremost handlers of the medium of gouache.
Three Figures and Cane Chair is typical of Vaughan's somewhat ominous and portentous subject matter around this time. Small groupings of male nude figures, alternately bathed in bright light and shrouded in mysterious shadow, had been a favourite concern since he completed his major work First Assembly of Figures in 1952. Here, three figures in a domestic interior play out a mysterious ritual. It is an emotionally and sexually charged scene, not least because of its unexplained nature and the varying degrees of light and deep shadow on the two background figures. Here and there, on the furniture and parts of the figures, blank paper supplies areas of light tone, while skilful and sensitive use of drybrush drawing and opaque layers of gouache define the anatomical forms.
It is interesting to note that Vaughan was the victim of an attempted blackmail the year he painted Three Figures and Cane Chair. Living as a gay man during the 1940s and 1950s, he harboured an underlying fear of discovery or public scandal. The memory of the incident haunted him for years and, perhaps, the anxiety and emotional disturbance he experienced may be felt in the erotic tension of the present work.
We are grateful to Gerard Hastings for compiling this catalogue entry.
