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Keith Vaughan served in the Pioneer Corps during the Second World War along with fellow artist John Minton. The pair shared a studio after the war when they were both influenced by the neoromantic movement. In the 1950s, Vaughan discovered the work of Nicholas de Stael and explored a fusion of figurative and abstract art, which in the 1960s evolved into a series of ambitious landscape paintings. Harrow Hill refers not to the area in northwest London but to Vaughan’s cottage in Toppesfield, in rural Essex. The level of abstraction in this painting is high; nonetheless, the vertical blocks across the canvas may refer to the windows, doors, and sloping roofs of local farm buildings, surrounded by patches of snow.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2020

Like his friend John Minton (whose work is shown alongside), Keith Vaughan served in the Pioneer Corps during the Second World War, and the pair shared a studio after the war when they were both influenced by the neoromantic movement. In the 1950s he discovered the work of Nicholas de Stael and explored a fusion of figurative and abstract art, which in the 1960s evolved into a series of ambitious landscape paintings. Harrow Hill refers not to the area in northwest London but to Vaughan’s cottage in Toppesfield, in rural Essex. The level of abstraction in this painting is high; nonetheless, the vertical blocks across the canvas may refer to the windows and doors and sloping roofs of local farm buildings, surrounded by patches of snow.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016