Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.![Keith Vaughan - Pupitre [1945]](//www.rssing.com/inc2/img/tinyinf.webp)
Clik here to view.
![Keith Vaughan - Pupitre [1945]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8671/15938828895_ffbddb6b8f_o.jpg)
The young man at his desk is in the process of making a drawing. He looks up as if for inspiration, perhaps into a mirror, but more likely towards an image of a muse. Echoes of the ancient Greek myth of Pygmalion come to mind; there is a sense of longing for the unattainable. We might be forgiven for interpreting the young artist as a quasi self-portrait. At the time Vaughan (1912 - 1977) painted this, his journals inform us that he had found companionship, intellectual stimulus and a genuine sense of camaraderie among his fellow members of the Non-Combatant Corps. He attached himself emotionally, over the course of the war, to various barrack mates but was unable to locate the intimacy or human affection he craved. One year before he had been separated, due to army transfers, from a young, married soldier named Bill Greest, who had been the object of his unrequited affection and fixation three years. Vaughan cherished his memory for the rest of his life, even writing of him in his final volume of journals over thirty years later.
[Sold for £27,500 at Sotheby’s, London - Pen and ink, crayon, wash and gouache, 20.5 x 15 cm]
