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Notes
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Keith Vaughan achieved something quite rare in British painting but close to the heart of the European tradition: monumental figure images of a generalized kind, often in summary landscape settings and conveying a sense of humanity in harmony with nature. The theme goes back to ancient Greece and it became a conscious concern of modern art with Cézanne's figure paintings of around 1900. Taking some formal ideas from Cubism, probably via Matisse, Vaughan constructed his figures as hard and soft, geometrical and organic. They are frontal, they are nude, they lack almost any detail and give little insight into individual personality or even sexual life. Their faces especially that on the right, are without character. Their poses are effective as form but have no narrative role.
Title
Water, Trees and Figures II
Date
1948–1959
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
H 62.5 x W 83.7 cm
Accession number
P392
Acquisition method
purchased from Mattiesons, 1963
Work type
Painting
Inscription description
br: Vaughan