Keith Vaughan is one of the best known and widely collected artists of the British Neo-Romantic movement alongside his friend John Minton. He was greatly influenced by the work of Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland, but also followed European avant-garde trends. His admiration for Nicholas de Steal was of particular importance.

His painting is resolutely figurative although he engaged directly with abstraction and often his work shows a fine balance between the two. He is perhaps best known for his figure paintings and drawings, particularly of male nudes, although landscape painting was a major part of his practice. Vaughan travelled widely in the post war period, visiting the Mediterranean, North Africa, Mexico and the USA. He became resident artist at Iowa State University in 1959. Vaughan taught in London at Camberwell School of Art (1946–8) and the Central School of Arts and Crafts (1948–57) and was a visiting teacher at the Slade School of Fine Art (1959–77).

He was widely respected by his peers and the establishment and was awarded a CBE for services to the arts, but he remained a melancholic figure somewhat tortured by his own sexuality. His work has been collected by most major public collections of British art, not least the Tate Gallery in London. He has been the subject of a number of major museum exhibitions including a retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1962 followed by an Arts Council tour. The centenary of Keith Vaughan's birth was celebrated with an exhibition at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, 'Keith Vaughan: Romanticism to Abstraction' (10 March to 10 June 2012).