Keith Vaughan,
British 1912-1977 – 
Landscape, 1953; 
oil on board, signed lower right 'Vaughan 53',...

Keith Vaughan,
British 1912-1977 – 

Landscape, 1953; 

oil on board, signed lower right 'Vaughan 53', 36.8 x 51.3 cm (ARR) 

Provenance: 
Dr A Neumann; 
with The Matthiesen Gallery, London (according to the label attached to the reverse of the frame); 
with Waddington Galleries, London; 
private collection; 
with Beaux Arts, Bath; 
John Allen;
Wayne Graham, Bath; 
Christie's, London, Twentieth Century British Art, 12th June 1998, lot 19; 
private collection 

Exhibited: 
Leicester Galleries, London, 'Exhibition of Works by Keith Vaughan', October 1953, either cat. no.5, 16 or 19; 
Durlacher Brothers, New York, 'Keith Vaughan: Paintings and Gouaches', 18th January-19th February 1955; 
Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, 'Keith Vaughan: paintings, gouaches and drawings 1941-68', 7th March-5th April 1969, cat. no.5

Note: 
with thanks to Anthony Hepworth for his assistance with the cataloguing of this work. His reference AH 155. 

This enigmatic landscape was made in 1953, a pivotal year in the artist’s career. Vaughan exhibited at the celebrated Leicester Galleries, where this work was shown, as well as part of the seminal show ‘Space in Colour’ at The Hanover Gallery curated by Patrick Heron, alongside the most celebrated figures of post-war British paintings such as William Scott, Victor Pasmore and Peter Lanyon. These events would bring his work to a wider audience and drive museums, including the Tate, to start purchasing his work. 

In this painting, Vaughan has dispensed with all figures and any literary references to explore pure landscape, using it as a cypher for his psychic state and dislocated understanding of the world around him. Despite the rigorous structure of the composition, there is a bodily quality to the curved forms of the landscape that locates the work within the artist's personal experiences. There is an economy to composition, with its autumnal palette of browns, greys and greens, every form pulsing in dialogue with the next. 

The work has been exhibited widely and internationally, including in New York and at the artist’s museum retrospective in Sheffield, demonstrating its importance within his oeuvre.