.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Vaughan depicts two boys, in the fading light, towelling themselves after a day spent at the beach and swimming in the sea. The ominous, darkening sky, typical of his Neo-Romantic style at this time, conveys a sense of impending menace; war continued to rage over Europe and England still endured the darkness of enforced blackout. The emotional tension generated between the figures extends outwards into nature.
The beach represented is Pagham on the South Coast and can be identified by the old Nyetimber windmill at the right, which still stands. During the late 1930s Vaughan spent his weekends visiting this seaside town with his friend Harold Colebrook. They lived on the shingle in a chalet converted from an old railway carriage and some of these can be found there today. Various friends joined them and, since no one else frequented that far end of the beach, "there was no need for us to observe what are considered the normal decencies of public bathing." (Keith Vaughan, Journal and Drawings 1939-1965, London: Alan Ross, 1966). They were free to bathe naked in the shallows and held late evening swimming parties. The two figures here relate directly to a series of photographs that Vaughan made six years earlier that show his friends Stan and his younger brother Len, swathed in bolts of sea-soaked linen, ingeniously draped about their torsos. Eight of these images were reproduced in Keith Vaughan: Journals and Drawings 1939-1965 and subsequently exerted a significant influence on the artist's depictions of the male nude. The same year he painted this gouache, Vaughan wrote: "I remember how in the heat of the August at Pagham after bathing, the salt from the sea, the thin crystalline lace of salt on the velvet amber-coloured skin of L's thighs & shoulders. Soundlessness of white cotton garment falling in a single wave from a brown body. Soaking up the light & colour of the day. Hot ripeness in the body's release during the cool vaulted night. Skin dark & thick as velvet." (Keith Vaughan, Unpublished Journal entry, 22 December, 1945).
Vaughan's early works are generically described as gouaches, but in fact they incorporate several other materials. Here, for example, the salt-stained skin of the two bathers is described by a delicate use of wax resist, while pen and Indian ink subtly trace out other pictorial details. As ever, and especially during this period of war-time frugality, Vaughan is economical with his colour and employs only yellow ochre, black and white gouache. With limited and simple resources, it is remarkable that he was able to achieve such a wide variety of related colours and range of tonal variations, all of which combine to create a painting of considerable emotional force.
We are very grateful to Gerard Hastings for preparing the catalogue entries for lot 253 and 254.
The present painting was formally in the collection of Dr Robert Strausz-Hupé (1903-2002), a distinguished diplomat, author, and founder of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
The beach represented is Pagham on the South Coast and can be identified by the old Nyetimber windmill at the right, which still stands. During the late 1930s Vaughan spent his weekends visiting this seaside town with his friend Harold Colebrook. They lived on the shingle in a chalet converted from an old railway carriage and some of these can be found there today. Various friends joined them and, since no one else frequented that far end of the beach, "there was no need for us to observe what are considered the normal decencies of public bathing." (Keith Vaughan, Journal and Drawings 1939-1965, London: Alan Ross, 1966). They were free to bathe naked in the shallows and held late evening swimming parties. The two figures here relate directly to a series of photographs that Vaughan made six years earlier that show his friends Stan and his younger brother Len, swathed in bolts of sea-soaked linen, ingeniously draped about their torsos. Eight of these images were reproduced in Keith Vaughan: Journals and Drawings 1939-1965 and subsequently exerted a significant influence on the artist's depictions of the male nude. The same year he painted this gouache, Vaughan wrote: "I remember how in the heat of the August at Pagham after bathing, the salt from the sea, the thin crystalline lace of salt on the velvet amber-coloured skin of L's thighs & shoulders. Soundlessness of white cotton garment falling in a single wave from a brown body. Soaking up the light & colour of the day. Hot ripeness in the body's release during the cool vaulted night. Skin dark & thick as velvet." (Keith Vaughan, Unpublished Journal entry, 22 December, 1945).
Vaughan's early works are generically described as gouaches, but in fact they incorporate several other materials. Here, for example, the salt-stained skin of the two bathers is described by a delicate use of wax resist, while pen and Indian ink subtly trace out other pictorial details. As ever, and especially during this period of war-time frugality, Vaughan is economical with his colour and employs only yellow ochre, black and white gouache. With limited and simple resources, it is remarkable that he was able to achieve such a wide variety of related colours and range of tonal variations, all of which combine to create a painting of considerable emotional force.
We are very grateful to Gerard Hastings for preparing the catalogue entries for lot 253 and 254.
The present painting was formally in the collection of Dr Robert Strausz-Hupé (1903-2002), a distinguished diplomat, author, and founder of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.