John Craxton

To mark the publication of a revelatory new biography on the Arcadian artist, author IAN COLLINS explains how a lucky life in the sun produced a sparkling array of pictures

- Ian Collins

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 looking and being, and by making the most of enormous amounts of good fortune, charm and talent.

But he added productivity to providence by utilising astonishing wits and willpower to exploit every opportunity. He maintained that almost all of us encounter a lot of luck – we need only to recognise it and act upon it swiftly and decisively before the moment passes.

Given this philosophy, it goes without saying that he could be reckless in the extreme and landed inevitably in many scrapes during his very own adventure story.

In Craxton’s unassailable view, being an artist was essentially an exercise in personal freedom – influences abounded but the point was to pursue an individual path come what may. And he always had the courage of his hedonistic convictions, and an endless curiosity bringing self-made erudition and a singular vision, to paint a life of pleasure.