Keith Vaughan (1912-77) was a major figure in post-war British art who is known for his searching portraits of the male nude and his association with the Neo-Romantic painters. This book provides for the first time a definitive, illustrated account of his life and work, exploring his wide-ranging achievement as a modern British artist.

There is nothing like Keith Vaughan's Journals. They represent one of the greatest pieces of confessional writing of the twentieth-century. Keith Vaughan was a painter and belonged to the Neo-Romantic group, other members including Graham Sutherland, John Minton, Michael Ayrton, Ceri Richards, John Piper and John Craxton. He was also gay and much troubled by his sexuality. 'Faced at the age of 27 with what then seemed the likelihood of imminent extinction before I had properly got started', he began the Journals in 1939 and only finished them at the very moment of his suicide in 1977. The Journals are edited by Alan Ross, and in his words they are 'a self-portrait of astonishing honesty: devoid of disguise in any shape or form, or hypocrisy. It is difficult to think of anything in literature they resemble.' The earlier Journals, covering his war and his period of greatest creativity in the late 1940s and 1950s, 'are revealing for the light they shed on a painter's character and, to a lesser extent, working methods.' The last Journals chronicle 'a descent into hell . . . redeemed by their frankness, spleen and dry humour.' First published in 1966 and then reissued in amplified form in 1989, it is the latter version Faber Finds is reissuing. The fuller edition itself has been out of print for a long time, so its renewed availability will be welcome.

Post-war British artist Keith Vaughan (1912-77) was not only a supremely accomplished painter; he was an impassioned, eloquent writer. Image of a Man provides a comprehensive critical reading of his extraordinary journal, uncovering the attitudes and arguments that shaped and reshaped Vaughan's identity as a man and as an artist.

John Keith Vaughan (23 August 1912 4 November 1977) was a British painter.0Born in Selsey, Vaughan attended Christ?s Hospital school. He worked in an advertising agency until the war, when as an intending conscientious objector he joined the St John?s Ambulance; in 1941 he was conscripted into the Non-Combatant Corps. Vaughan was self-taught as an artist. His first exhibitions took place during the war. In 1942 he was stationed at Ashton Gifford near Codford in Wiltshire, and paintings from this time include 'The Wall at Ashton Gifford' (Manchester Art Gallery).00Exhibition: Osborne Samuel Gallery, London, UK (05.06-12.07.2019).

List of Figures -- Acknowledgements -- Series preface -- Introduction: 'Shaken by the Spirit of Reconstruction' -- 1. John Bratby: Masculinity and Violence in the Post-War Home -- 2. Francis Bacon: Queer Intimacy and Queer Spaces of Home -- 3. Keith Vaughan: Bodies and Memories of Home -- 4. Francis Newton Souza: Masculinity, Migration, and Home -- 5. Victor Pasmore: Abstraction and the Post-War Landscape of Home -- Conclusion: Gilbert & George and the Persistence of Reconstruction Notes Bibliography -- Index.