Richard Canning
Passing On
Drawing to a Close: The Final Journals of Keith Vaughan
By Gerard Hastings
Sansom and Company 208pp £40
Keith Vaughan: The Mature Oils 1946–1977 – A Commentary and a Catalogue Raisonné
By Anthony Hepworth and Ian Massey
Lund Humphries 184pp £40
Keith Vaughan
By Philip Vann & Gerard Hastings
Lund Humphries 184pp £40
The reputation of the artist Keith Vaughan, who would have celebrated his hundredth birthday last year, may have dramatically declined since his suicide in 1977. However, his centenary saw conspicuous rehabilitation, with a major retrospective at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, which was followed by two London shows and the publication of these three excellent, complementary volumes.
Entirely self-taught, Vaughan came to his calling by way of a stint as an advertisement layout artist. If his methodical placing of human forms owed something to the skills he had honed in his job, it also – ironically – anticipated the compositional focus of the very movement, abstraction, which
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It wasn’t until 1825 that Pepys’s diary became available for the first time. How it was eventually decrypted and published is a story of subterfuge and duplicity.
Kate Loveman tells the tale.
Kate Loveman - Publishing Pepys
Kate Loveman: Publishing Pepys
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Arthur Christopher Benson was a pillar of the Edwardian establishment. He was supremely well connected. As his newly published diaries reveal, he was also riotously indiscreet.
Piers Brendon compares Benson’s journals to others from the 20th century.
Piers Brendon - Land of Dopes & Tories
Piers Brendon: Land of Dopes & Tories - The Benson Diaries: Selections from the Diary of Arthur Christopher Benson by Eamon Duffy & Ronald Hyam (edd)
literaryreview.co.uk
Of the siblings Gwen and Augustus John, it is Augustus who has commanded most attention from collectors and connoisseurs.
Was he really the finer artist, asks Tanya Harrod, or is it time Gwen emerged from her brother’s shadow?
Tanya Harrod - Cut from the Same Canvas
Tanya Harrod: Cut from the Same Canvas - Artists, Siblings, Visionaries: The Lives and Loves of Gwen and Augustus John by Judith Mackrell
literaryreview.co.uk