Collins’s subtitle echoes Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts (1977), while also hinting at the generosity of friends that Craxton, serially out of pocket, relied on throughout his life – and, to be fair, showed to others when he had the means. Craxton went on to draw the covers for almost all of Leigh Fermor’s books. He finally made it to Greece in 1946, quickly establishing friendships that would last the rest of his life – with author (and fellow show-off) Patrick Leigh Fermor, his girlfriend Joan, and the Greek artist Nico Ghika. Craxton needed little encouragement: trips to the Scilly Isles and Pembrokeshire were enough to inspire paintings with titles like Greek Fisherman. Graham Sutherland, an early admirer and mentor, advised him to ‘paraphrase reality’ in his work. He began to long for Greece, a country for which he felt a deep affinity without actually having been there. Private collectionĬonstant chest and lung complaints made him detest damp England. Landscape with Poet and Birdcatcher (1942), John Craxton. In 1944, an entrance-hall show at the Leicester Galleries virtually sold out he was still only 21. Craxton later dismissed the Neo-Romantic label (‘You are either a Romantic in spirit or you are not’), but his images of moon-faced dreamers repining in landscapes of rocks and swollen vegetable matter undeniably caught the mood of the moment. Samuel Palmer and William Blake were early and enduring influences. The magazine’s art editor, the influential patron Peter Watson, bought Craxton’s Poet in Landscape (1941), a picture Ian Collins calls ‘the poster image for British Neo-Romantic art’. At the age of 13 Craxton was the star of a school show in London at 19 his work appeared in Horizon.
The family home was a ramshackle set-up in St John’s Wood stuffed with animals, bicycles and antiques. Both were well connected in bohemian circles. He was born in 1922, the fourth of six siblings, to Harold Craxton, a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, and his wife Essie. Preview and subscribe here.įor an artist, John Craxton could not have wished for a more congenial upbringing. This review of John Craxton: A Life of Gifts by Ian Collins was published in the May 2021 issue of Apollo.
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