The Rectory Garden relates to an earlier series of works, from the mid-1940s, which recall when Keith Vaughan was stationed in Yorkshire and serving in the non-combatant corps. One of his duties was to clear vegetation from the grounds of various country estates and a number of paintings were made depicting the houses near Ashton, Malton and Haselton, all set in romantic, overgrown gardens and enclosed by ivy-clad walls. Examples include The Rectory Garden, 1944 (see Malcolm Yorke, 'Keith Vaughan, His Life and Works', pl. 3), Hasleton House, 1945, (see 'The Penguin New Writing, No. 23', 1945) and The Walled Garden, 1951 (lithograph).

In this work, Vaughan approaches a similar theme but, to use his own words, now with 'the solidity and depth of oil' (exhibition catalogue, 'Keith Vaughan', London, Lefevre Gallery, May 1944). He has employed a limited but harmonious palette in this twilight scene, in which dark, looming forms and shadows fall towards us with an emphasis on the crossing forms. The blue passages at the centre of the work are key, appearing to be the reflections on window panes. Vaughan, through his ongoing negotiation between abstraction and figuration, has created a magical conglomeration of organic and geometric structured forms.