Keith Vaughan exhibition in Chichester

Congratulations to Simon Martin, curator of the excellent exhibition of the work of Keith Vaughan at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. Is it the first collected showing of Vaughan’s work in a public space? Vaughan was born at nearby Selsey.

I’ve been interested in him for many years. He was the major figure in an exhibition that I commissioned in 1988 of artists who had worked at the Lintas advertising agency (where I spent ten happy and productive years). It ran at Agnew’s gallery in Mayfair.

And I have a set of three ballet-based gouaches from 1936 – when the young artist was working as a designer at the agency.

At that time, Lintas was Unilever’s in-house advertising business, and the boss, Ivor Cooper, was that rare combination – a good artist and a fine businessman. These were the days before television, and most print advertising was art-based, with very little photography in use.

Cooper hired the best artists he could find and encouraged them to develop their gifts, even to the extent of allowing them to do their own work at the office.

Among Vaughan’s colleagues there were the Australian John Passmore, New Zealander Felix Kelly and Englishman Roy Hobdell. The last two were both deeply involved in the transformation of Buscot House for Lord Faringdon.

But, even though he was younger than most of them, Keith Vaughan was always looked on by colleagues as the leader of the pack.

Keith Vaughan: Romanticisnm to Abstraction runs at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, until 10 June.

Artists in the workplace

When I was working at the ad agency Lintas in London, I stumbled upon the fact that in an earlier generation (in the 1930s and 40s), long before the arrival of TV advertising, there had been a coterie of outstanding young artists employed there. Lintas was originally set up as the house agency for the consumer goods giant, Unilever.

Perhaps the most significant of them was the painter, Keith Vaughan (above, “Landscape with figure”, 1959). A good Vaughan will go for upwards of £150,000 in today’s market. Others included the Australian, John Passmore, much of whose work is now in the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, the New Zealand-born painter of English country houses, Felix Kelly, and the brilliant trompe l’oeil artist, Roy Hobdell. Having discovered their existence, I was lucky enough to commission an exhibition of their work at Agnew’s in Old Bond Street some fifty years later in 1988.

How was it that they all congregated at Lintas? Certainly it was not by accident. In fact, the dynamic boss of the business at that time, Ivor Cooper, understood that if the agency was to shine creatively, it had to have the most talented people – and for him that meant hiring the finest young artists. Of course, this was not the tokenistic artist-in-residence that some contemporary organisations employ. It was artists at the heart of the company's creative product.

But hiring the artists was just a start. An artist himself, Cooper encouraged them to develop their talents, giving them time off for study and even allowing them to do their own work at the office when time permitted. And the respect that the boss was held in meant that this freedom was not abused.

While not every business needs outstanding artists, all organisations need some highly creative people in their ranks. Yet research shows that currently less than one third have any reference to creativity or innovativeness in their recruitment or appraisal processes.

How is it where you are?