A sign from the gods

John Craxton (born 1922) is a painter who has spent much of his life in Greece. Growing up in an intensely musical family in Hampstead (his father was the first pianist to play Debussy in England, his sister was a celebrated oboist), he was aware from a very early age of the infinite and magical connections between sound and the visual image. His subsequent work as a painter has all the structure one expects of a great composer: his are paintings which sing of their substance.

Craxton first went to Greece in 1946, staying on Poros, an island renowned for its ravishing charm (Lawrence Durrell called it ‘the happiest place I have ever known’). In 1951, Craxton shared digs with Patrick Leigh Fermor. Apparently, Leigh Fermor’s preferred regimen was to taverna-crawl by day and write by night. Craxton, ever the sociable, found painting by night difficult because of the lack of proper lighting.