In Arcadia

Last year, within the space of five weeks before Christmas, I lost two friends who had illumined the world for me and made it a more enlivening place. Both were artists, both were in their eighties and both were determined individualists who recognised each other’s work without being in any way close allies. John Craxton was the first to die, in hospital on 17 November after a short illness. Just over a month later, Craigie Aitchison dropped dead of a heart attack. I hope to write about Aitchison when some of his distinctive work on the theme of the Crucifixion is on show. This is a tribute to John Craxton.

An artist with a particular interest in the inhabited landscape, Craxton could summon up the spirit of place with a wit and ingenuity that left most painters of his generation standing. Aware from youth that there is no art without other art, he sought out essence rather than originality, but achieved an original vision by the depth of his understanding and interpretation. John detested labels and pigeonholes, principally because they encouraged unjustified assumptions and lazy thinking, and he is frequently quoted as disliking the term ‘neo-romantic’, which was attached to his own work of the 1940s. It was the ‘neo’ he objected to particularly, being proud to admit his indebtedness to the Romantic vision of William Blake and Samuel Palmer, just as he would be the first to claim the inspiring influence of Byzantine art.

Bryan Robertson, the brilliant director of the Whitechapel Gallery who gave Craxton a retrospective in 1967, noted the enduring appeal of John’s work — its qualities of clarity, incisiveness and abstraction. He wrote:

Robertson made the point that Craxton painted only for pleasure and did not seek out a public career — so much so that in later years I would encounter many an art lover who thought him already dead because he was visible so little on the exhibiting circuit.