Following the success of previous Keith Vaughan exhibitions at the gallery, this is the fourth major exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Keith Vaughan.
This current exhibition includes the monumental Theseus and the Minotaur,1950, the largest picture he ever painted, aside from his publicly commissioned murals. Other highlights include Bathers at Collioure, 1958, a major canvas entitled Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, 1964 that remained in a European collection for decades, and two small gems from the early 1950s, Grey Shore Seascape, 1950 that had been hidden in the collection of Hertfordshire
County Council, and Road to the Sea, 1953-58. Amongst the gouaches, is the exquisite Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love, 1942 and from the same year another exceptional gouache Coal Fatigue. These and many of the other works in the show have not been seen at the gallery before.
Vaughan was a very quiet, private man who struggled with his sexuality, movingly recorded in intimate journals that he began in 1939 and continued until the moment he took his own life in 1977. His writing was equal to his painting; articulate and erudite, precise and considered – if he had chosen a literary path there is no doubt, he would have been equally successful.
