The high and low life of John Craxton

Charm is a weasel word; it can evoke the superficial and insincere, and engender suspicion and mistrust. But charm in its most authentic sense was surely the defining quality of the painter John Craxton, and it flavours this lively and richly coloured account of his life. Ian Collins only met the elderly Craxton — by now sporting the moustaches, shepherd’s stick and general demeanour of a Cretan chieftain — in the last decade of his life (he lived to 88), and was immediately seduced by his joie de vivre and his fund of recondite knowledge, stories and jokes, and drawn into Craxton’s charmed circle. He became the artist’s Boswell, taping hours of interviews, working with him towards a monograph on his art and gaining his tacit agreement to a strictly posthumous biography.

And what a high-octane ride it turns out to be. Few painters of the past century can have packed so much hedonism around the boundaries of their art, or adopted another country and culture with the fervour that Craxton adopted Greece. To a natural sensualist, its brilliant light and wild, craggy landscape acted like a magnet away from the doldrums of post-war London and the dour climate particularly enervating to a young man with tuberculosis and a passion to paint. The son of the musician Harold Craxton and a family as baggy and bohemian as they come, John got off to a flying start, and was always encouraged to strike out and explore the world for himself. Along the way he discovered Samuel Palmer, William Blake and his own homosexuality, and developed a genius for making friends and connections.

Through Peter Watson, the cultural patron and sponsor of Horizon, he fell in happily with the demi-monde of Soho and Fitzrovia and soon met Lucian Freud, who became his boon companion and ultimate nemesis.