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A painter’s paradise: the life of John Craxton
The artist John Craxton had a close relationship with archaeology. It began in his early years in England, where he encountered excavations of Roman mosaics, medieval churches, and an idiosyncratic museum. But, above all, it was the art of Greece that he longed for, as Ian Collins explains.
Born into a cultured and well-connected bohemian family in London, the painter John Craxton (1922-2009) yearned from a very early age to live and work in Greece. He achieved his goal, and enduring joy coloured his ensuing pictures – radiant images of a world where myth survived in everyday existence.
In a rented St John’s Wood villa, the Craxton parents ran an open house for the cash-strapped and musically gifted. Space was tight and household budgets always close to breaking, so their six children – John being the fourth of five sons before a desired daughter – were packed off to schools of very mixed quality. When these outposts failed, the siblings were palmed off on relatives
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