John Craxton was more gifted than the Fitzwilliam show suggests

It is often said of John Craxton (1922–2009) that he knew how to live well and considered this more important than art. Perhaps there is a certain truth in this, but if he really believed it, did he have any business in being an artist? And an artist he undoubtedly was, by temperament and sensibility, as well as by the rich endowment of natural talent. Of course, letting it be known that you think life more important than art is a very good cover for that most debilitating (and paradoxically productive) of besetting fears: self-doubt. Craxton had it in large measure, and it is probably this quality that accounted both for his originality and for the painter’s block he periodically suffered. With his wide-ranging knowledge and eclectic eye, he could easily have made work that was more pastiche than personal, but his best pictures transcend the echoes of El Greco and Byzantine art, of Picasso’s Cubism and the sinuous surrealism of Miró.