John Craxton, R.A.

The Mayor Gallery, London
Edward Tankard Esq, Italy
David Ker, London, where acquired by the present owner 24th February 1992

London, The Whitechapel Gallery, John Craxton: Paintings and Drawings 1941-1966, January - February 1967, cat. no.36.

Ian Collins, John Craxton, Lund Humphries, Farnham, 2011, illustrated p.88.

The canvas has been relined. There are some faint signs of craquelure located in isolated areas in the left half of the picture, notably above the figure's hands and his left elbow, in the fishing net under his right cheek, near his chin and in the fishing net underneath the right side of his torso. These are largely only visible upon close inspection. There are occasional frame abrasions and old spots of paint loss along the edges, otherwise the work appears in good overall condition. Ultraviolet light reveals a few small areas of retouching to some abrasions along the upper and right edges. There is a vertical line of retouching approximately 10cm. long left of the figure's left foot, which may relate to an old repair - this retouching has very slighlty discoloured. There are a few small spots of retouching to the left of this line, and also to the figure's left shoulder and torso. There are one or two further very isolated and minor spots about the canvas. Held in a large gilt plaster frame. Please contact the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions about the present work.
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'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)

Sleeping figures in the art of John Craxton were initially emblematic portraits of the artist himself, with eyes closed against the menace of war-time Britain. While in Greece he depicted men resting in perfect peace after physical labour. This Poros fisherman from 1948 relates closely to the foreground sleeper in an important painting of the previous year, Shepherds near Knossos (fig.1, sold in these rooms, 13th December 2007, lot 8), a drawing for which is included in this sale (lot 111).

Craxton began his life-long love affair with Greece on a trip to Poros in 1946. In 1947 he and Lucian Freud, with whom he 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. A seminal period in Craxton's artistic development, Sleeping Fisherman is one of the finest works to emerge following this critical turning point.

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. The astonishing effect of the Greek landscape and light 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 fisherman in the foreground bathes in the light of the Mediterranean, his face becoming planes of pigment that reflect the blues and greens of sea and sky. The artist revels in the patterns, textures, and shapes on view, the writhing web of nets on which the figure rests, the tiles of the dock, the crease and folds of a trouser leg.

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.' (The Artist quoted in Whitechapel Art Gallery, (exh. cat.) 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 archaeologist 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.

We are very grateful to Ian Collins for his kind assistance in the cataloguing of the present work. Ian Collins is currently preparing the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the Artist's work and would like to hear from owners of any work by the artist so that these can be included in this comprehensive catalogue. Please write to Ian Collins, c/o Sotheby's, Modern & Post-War British Art, London, W1A 2AA.