KEITH VAUGHAN (BRITISH, 1912-1977)
Assembly of Figures II
signed and dated 'Keith Vaughan/1965' (lower right); inscribed and dated again 'Landscape with Figures (IV) 1965' (on the front of the backboard lower right); titled and dated again 'Assembly of Figures #2/1965' (on a label attached another backboard)
wash, gouache, pen & ink and crayon
52.5 x 44.8 cm. (20 5/8 x 17 5/8 in.)

Provenance
The artist, from whom acquired by
Russell Strauss
Sale; Sotheby's, London, 11 May 1988, lot 129
With Louise Hallett Gallery, London, where purchased by
Private Collection, U.K.
Their sale; Bonhams, 13 June 2018, lot 2
With Osborne Samuel, London, 2020, where purchased by the present owner

We are grateful to Gerard Hastings and Anthony Hepworth for their assistance in cataloguing this lot.

Over the course of twenty-five years Vaughan produced nine major paintings to which he applied the title ‘Assembly of Figures’. The first dates from 1952 and the last was completed one year before he died, in 1976. He also produced a series of other related works, such as Small Assembly of Figures (1951-53), Small Red Assembly (1963), Blue Assembly of Figures (1964), Dark Assembly (1964), and Red Assembly (1964), which are variants on the theme. To this list we can also add the large Crowd Assembling I and II (1967 and 1968). All these works are painted in oil. A few related ‘Assembly’ gouaches and drawings also exist, including the present work.

The ‘Assembly’ paintings share certain pictorial characteristics. For example, the protagonists are invariably male and are presented to the viewer nude or semi-nude. This makes identification of the individual, his social class or profession, impossible to ascertain. The settings are beachscapes or semi-abstracted landscape environments, whereby figure and location are melded together into a coherent, plastic vision – despite there being few specific clues to indicate where they are. Nor can we interpret what precise activities the figures are engaged in, or what the purpose of their coming together might be. Gestures are generally of an anti-dramatic type and psychological expressions are virtually non-existent. The lack of narrative clarity is intentionally restricted to engender pictorial ambiguity and generate a quality of enigmatic uncertainty. One may presume these congregations of nameless individuals, at the mercy of the elements, characterize aspects of mankind in general – naked, vulnerable, sluggish and awkward in forging both personal relationships and social associations.

A reading of Vaughan’s journals indicates that they investigations concerning his own position in and relationship to the world around him. Moreover, we might imagine ourselves to be also member of one of these assemblies. These compositions rely on the assumption (hard to justify perhaps, but none the less real to me) that the human figure, the nude, is still a valid symbol for the expression of man’s aspirations and reactions to the life of his time. No longer incorporated in the church or any codified system of belief, the Assemblies are deprived of literary significance or illustrative meaning. The participants have not assembled for any particular purpose such as a virgin birth, martyrdom, or inauguration of a new power station. In so far as their activity is aimless and their assembly pointless, they might be said to symbolize an age of doubt against an age of faith. But that is not the point. Although the elements are recognisably human, their meaning is plastic. They attempt a summary and condensed statement of the relationship between things, expressed through a morphology common to all organic and inorganic matter.
(Keith Vaughan, ‘Painter’s Progress’, Studio, August 1958)

We are grateful to Gerard Hastings for compiling this catalogue entry.