Keith Vaughan (1912-1977)

Vaughan produced three or four studies of this model in 1948-49, both in pencil and lithographic crayon, including Seated Boy in a Landscape, 1948 (see M. Yorke, Keith Vaughan: His Life and Work, London, 1990, p. 134). They are all studies for Vaughan’s first lithograph The Woodman (also known as Blue Boy), published by the Redfern Gallery in 1949.

The model was John McGuinness, who met Vaughan in 1948. Having been estranged from his parents at a very early age, he had been brought up as an orphan by priests in Liverpool. After working in hotels and grocery shops, he began an affair with Vaughan. In some ways McGuinness replaced Vaughan’s younger brother Dick, who had been killed in the war a few years earlier. He was kitted out in Dick’s clothes, taught how to cook, had his manners improved and was generally ‘brought on’.

The working-class, ill-educated McGuinness, with his large hands and athletic body, represented something raw and honest and embodied all the qualities that attracted Vaughan. His gentle, unaffected and open-hearted character allied him with nature, in Vaughan’s imagination. We find his broad, broken nose, thick thumbs and rugged appearance in several works at this time including Seated Boy in a Landscape (1948), Fishermen at Mevagissey (1948), The Woodsman lithograph (1949) and Nude Study (1951), as well several monoprints and drawings. They remained extremely close for thirty years. It was McGuinness who discovered Vaughan’s lifeless body shortly after he killed himself in November 1977.

We are grateful to Gerard Hastings for compiling the note for this lot, and those for lots 47 and 50; his new book, Behind the Locked Door: Keith Vaughan's Erotic Work, is to be published in the Spring of 2017, by Pagham Press (www.thekeithvaughansociety.com).