Signed: l.l.: K.V.

Pencil, 27.5 by 20.5 cm

Provenance: The Artist's Estate, Prunella Clough, Professor John Ball, Private Collection UK, Sotheby's London 28 Sept. 2016 Lot 110, bt., John Constable

The work comes from a series of late drawings that Vaughan made which he called ''Graffiti Drawings' It is a vigorous, highly worked image composed of a series of powerful lines and energetic cross-hatchings. The anatomy of the figures is handled in an immediate and summary manner. Such drawings give voice to what John Ball describes as:

"... Keith's complex sexuality and his refined artistic vision. They are wonderfully evocative and masterfully concise. For me they're some of the finest things Keith produced - distilled rather like Beethoven's late quartets or Eliot's best poems - seemingly effortless yet packed with significance. There's such an economy of means - a few lines express an entire biography or a complex persona. Keith drew to work out his passions and make his emotional requirements concrete. Most are terribly personal and so very moving in their honesty; they're concerned with basic and often brutal human truths and examine complicated inter-relationships - what more can one ask of an artist? (Gerard Hastings, Keith Vaughan Four Decades of Drawing, exh. cat. London Gallery 27)

"The intense charge and neurotic quality of this work could, perhaps be explained by Vaughan's physical and emotional condition at that time. Two days after he executed this drawing, his journal reveals he discovered a growth which was subsequently diagnosed as cancer. "(Gerard Hastings, 2016)