John Craxton, R.A.

Dr K.W.C. Sinclair-Loutit
Private Collection, U.S.A.

London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, John Craxton: Paintings and Drawings 1941-1966, January-February 1967, no.28, illustrated (dimensions differ in the catalogue where they are recorded as approximately 36 by 48in.).

Geoffrey Grigson, John Craxton, Horizon, London, 1948, no.20, illustrated.

The canvas has been relined. It undulates slightly in the upper right quadrant. There is faint craquelure visible in areas across the surface of the upper and lower right quadrants and in a small area in the lower left quadrant. There are a few very tiny spots of paint loss in all four quadrants. A few small areas of retouching are visible under ultra-violet light. The largest spot is to the left of the tree in the centre of the composition. There are two other minor spots in the upper left quadrant and a scattering of small spots in the upper right quadrant. Held in a wooden and composition frame which has sustained some significant losses and abrasions.
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Craxton began his life-long love affair with Greece on a trip to Poros in 1946. In 1947 he and Lucian Freud, who shared a studio in London, stayed with a local Greek family on the same island, where they painted for an exhibition to be held at the London Gallery in the autumn. Shepherds Near Knossos is one of the finest works to emerge from this seminal period in Craxton's artistic development. 

Craxton's descriptions of his first impressions of Greece communicate the now unimaginable impact these bright new lands must have had on a young painter emerging from a war spent in London. 'Greece was more than everything that I had imagined and far more than I had expected... As my first contact with the Mediterranean and the discovery of the action of light, the way light and shadow behave, the arrival in Greece was astonishing.' (John Craxton, Christopher Hull Gallery, London, 1985, p.22). The astonishing effect of the Greek landscape is powerfully conveyed in the present work. Craxton has broken up the picture plane into sharply contrasting facets of colour which make no attempt at gradual variations of tone. The monumental shepherd in the foreground bathes in the light of the Mediterranean. He occupies a sharply delineated triangle of colour which is framed by his forearm along the upper edge. The second shepherd stands astride a rocky outcrop, his great leg reaching towards the sleeping figure in the foreground. Perspective is conveyed entirely by size, with no regard to gentle variations of tone. 

In an interview with Bryan Robertson in 1967, Craxton described how 'the impact of some of the masterpieces of Byzantine art, especially in mosaic, which I first saw in 1946-47, had a strong effect on me and this has been persistent.' (John Craxton, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1967, p.10). The richly coloured, faceted paint surface certainly owes much to the art and architecture encountered by Craxton for the first time in Greece. Furthermore, during a stay in Crete, Craxton stayed at Villa Ariadne, the headquarters of the archeaologist Arthur Evans, who excavated Knossos at the turn of the century. It was not, however the heritage of Greek civilisation at Knossos that most affected Craxton, but the light and landscape of Greece after war in London. 

We are grateful to the artist for his kind assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.