Keith Vaughan 1912-1977
Labourers Sowing, 1945
gouache, ink and pastel on paper
4¾ x 6¾ ins
signed and dated ?46 lower left, titled and dated 1945 on backboard

Provenance
The Redfern Gallery, London
From where acquired by Miss Audrey M Keates in 1952

Exhibited
Redfern Gallery, London, December 1952



In his journal for the 2nd May 1945 the artist wrote:

‘On the train coming back. From the window I saw two boys cycling together along a straight wide road which had just been washed by a shower of rain.

I saw an old man bending over a coop of chickens on a small wedge of grass and slowly dropping the grain between his fingers.

I saw two men striding forward across a sown field flinging out handfuls of white powder from a basket slung around their necks. The sky had gone a deep orange colour and we were running into fresh showers.

Each successive image was so vivid that I had the sensation of becoming entirely a part of the whole situation. I could smell the sharp tarry smell of the steaming road; feel the hardness of saddle and the slight ache in the limbs. I could fell the seeds trickling between my fingers, the slightly damp stillness, the smell of chicken dung. Then the spaciousness of the field and the striding forward into the wind and the need to keep powder out of the eyes.

Each situation was unaware of the existence of the others; only through my observing them did they acquire a certain relationship. In painting one could try to express that relationship’.

Keith Vaughan, Journal & Drawings, 1939-1965, Alan Ross London, 1966, p.103