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10 K E I T H VA U G H A N GREY SHORE SEASCAPE, 1950 1950 was a crucial year for Vaughan in terms of his development as a painter. His handling of oil paint, which he had been unable to use during the war, became more confident and assured. In terms of their structural arrangement, his compositions gained a definite strength and even his use of colour, though often monochromatic and muted, developed distinctly harmonious properties. In his studio record book he records three paintings in succession concerned with fishermen and boats: Grey Shore Seascape with Fishermen, Grey Shore with Boat and this painting, Grey Shore Seascape. In 1948 Vaughan visited the Île de Ré and La Rochelle, the neighbouring town on the mainland. He discovered an 'intimate landscape with sea, boats, fishermen, soft pearly colour'. In his journal he admitted that his romantic allegiances were now coming to an end. The following year he again visited Brittany on a cycling tour, looking for further subjects. While cycling round the coastline of Finistère, staying in small villages and hamlets and making drawings as he went, he immersed himself in the diaries of André Gide and recorded his thoughts in his own journal. What he found in Northern France came as a surprise. Instead of a sun-drenched terrain occupied by colourful inhabitants, he discovered a harsh and dour but, nevertheless, dramatic landscape. The black dolerite and granite stonewalls of the Brittany coastline and the grey, cloudy skies may have come as a disappointment but, nonetheless, they provided Vaughan with ample pictorial material. Each of these small-scale, but heavily worked paintings, indicate that Vaughan was investigating surface texture as an expressive component to amplify the representational elements of his painting. Instead of canvas, for example, he experimented with hessian, linen and sacking laid onto board and also mixed sand into his pigment to gave it a more tangible quality. This contributes qualities of granularity and grittiness that evoke the trade and tackle associated with fishing. The schematized forms and figures, executed with an economy of means, are angled and compressed and described in broad outline. This intentionally 'crude' approach associates them with the the outdoor, physical activities of the fishermen. Always attentive to his studio records, Vaughan noted that Grey Shore and Seascape originally sold for £40.00.