This artwork is certainly part of the small series of paintings Vaughan completed between 1948 and 1951 which focus on individual or small groups of nude male figures set within domestic settings. 

Painted in a newly sculptural manner with an austere subtle colour palette and a formal compositional arrangement, the series marked for Vaughan a move away from the neo-romantic gouaches that had occupied him for much of the 1940s, at which time he was particularly influenced by the work of Graham Sutherland and William Blake, and towards the Cubism and pictorial simplification of Post-Impressionists.  He stated in 1948: ‘Greater awareness of potentialities and weaknesses – the transparency of form triumphs, solutions to most of the main technical problems and a clearer view of the real goal. Return of interest to the French, Cézanne and Picasso and away from the Blake, Palmer, Sutherland movement’  (Keith Vaughan, Journal, 24-2-1948).

Value 17-20 000 €