John Craxton

“In Craxton’s unassailable view, being an artist was essentially an exercise in personal freedom”

Seventy-five springs ago a borrowed bomber landed in Athens, bearing the wife of the British Ambassador and a consignment of curtains. Also on board was a young artist who had cadged a lift and whose dream had just come true.

Born into a large, musical and bohemian family in London in 1922, John Craxton had been a nomad from childhood. Crashing out of seven or eight schools and palmed off with a long line of family friends and relations, he had only ever wanted to draw and paint – and, from an early point, to live and work in Greece. Shunning formal tuition in art, as in everything else, he learned by