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Lot Essay
Vaughan painted twenty still life oil paintings over the course of his career. His studio record books inform us that he destroyed two of them, one in 1953 and the other in 1960. Almost all include fruit of one kind or another. Pomegranate, Lemon, Cup was painted in 1948 and exhibited at the Reid and Lefevre Gallery where it was bought by Caroline Lucas, of the Millers Press in Lewes. That year Vaughan produced three still life paintings, two of which feature a pomegranate. In the years following the war such fruits were still difficult to come by for many, so its inclusion in this sparse composition is emblematic of something special and exotic.
The composition could not be simpler, consisting of a horizontal tabletop covered by a cloth with a vertical, striped pattern. These angular forms are counterbalanced by the curved and rounded shapes of the fruit and cup. This harmonious association of geometric and organic forms is reinforced by the economical use of colour. A series of related pink and yellow ochre hues underpin the simplicity of the subject, perhaps one of Vaughan’s most distilled, concentrated and ordered. Order was at the heart of everything he did. He said that, 'If you make an orderly resolution to the particular problem you set out with, you automatically make some sort of comment on the human situation. You have demonstrated that order is possible. I am trying to sort out a personal conflict which I suppose is shared by a certain number of other people' (Keith Vaughan, unpublished interview with Dr Tony Carter, 1963).
We are very grateful to Gerard Hastings for preparing this catalogue entry. His new book on Keith Vaughan's graphic art will be published by Lund Humphries later this year.
The composition could not be simpler, consisting of a horizontal tabletop covered by a cloth with a vertical, striped pattern. These angular forms are counterbalanced by the curved and rounded shapes of the fruit and cup. This harmonious association of geometric and organic forms is reinforced by the economical use of colour. A series of related pink and yellow ochre hues underpin the simplicity of the subject, perhaps one of Vaughan’s most distilled, concentrated and ordered. Order was at the heart of everything he did. He said that, 'If you make an orderly resolution to the particular problem you set out with, you automatically make some sort of comment on the human situation. You have demonstrated that order is possible. I am trying to sort out a personal conflict which I suppose is shared by a certain number of other people' (Keith Vaughan, unpublished interview with Dr Tony Carter, 1963).
We are very grateful to Gerard Hastings for preparing this catalogue entry. His new book on Keith Vaughan's graphic art will be published by Lund Humphries later this year.