Keith Vaughan at Osborne Samuel

A new show of Keith Vaughan’s gouaches, drawings and prints opened at Osborne Samuel in Bruton Street, London last night.

Over 100 pictures form this inspiring and beautifully displayed collection. From a very early and highly accomplished scraperboard image from 1932 to an intriguing drawing of Francis Bacon (with an amusingly small head and huge oblong body), David Sylvester and John Russell from 1976, the show covers every area of Vaughan’s output.

The 1940s neo-romantic period is especially well represented with pen and ink barracks drawings and verdant gouache landscapes nestling next to each other.

It’s intriguing to see male nudes in contrasting depictions from 1941: two romantic Tchelitchew-esque drawings of vulnerable figures (Weeping Male Figure and Standing Male Figure by Moonlight) are followed by stridently masculine brusque nudes (e.g. Standing Nude Boy); the emotional interior and the physical exterior aspects of Vaughan’s work clear in these few images.

There are several tree studies from this wartime period too, with one resonant image of fallen trees in black ink, looking like dead bodies strewn across a forest floor from 1940.

The many pencil drawings of male nudes vary in quality, with the most successful being the erotic – Lovers 1968 and Two Figures Embracing (undated) being highly charged sensually, emotionally and sexually in simple line drawings. It’s worth remembering how taboo any depiction of homosexuality was until very recently and these graphic works could never have been publicly displayed in his lifetime.

It’s well worth going along, but if you can’t make it, a hardback catalogue is available, with an essay by Gerard Hastings. The 2007 paintings and drawings catalogue has also been reprinted in a small edition of 500 copies available from www.osbornesamuel.com and the images of works in the show can also be seen on the website