Keith Vaughan 1912-1977
Seaside Entertainers, 1947
oil on board
16 by 20 inches
signed lower right

Provenance
R. L. Banks
Dr A. E. Neuman
Private Collection, UK

Exhibited
London, Geffyre Museum, Keith Vaughan: Images of Man, 15^th May- 28^th June 1981
cat no.4, illus b/w, touring to
Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, 8^th July- 1^st September 1981



Following the great 1946 exhibition of Picasso and Matisse at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Vaughan broke away from the Sutherland-inspired romanticism of his wartime gouaches. His work became broader, more painterly, the linear drawing acquiring volume and mass. Anecdotal incident gave way to formalised design, and his figures started to take on the monumentality that characterises them in his mature work. At first he particularised his figures, however, endowing them with a social personal identitiy as labourers, entertainers, quarrymen, ice-cream sellers, woodmen and so on; only later, from 1948 onwards, did he enter into his essential engagement with the ideal in art, free from specified local references.

Extract from the exhibition catalogue Keith Vaughan: Images of Man, 1981