BOY WITH A DOG
signed Craxton lower right
oil on paper mounted on card
61 x 43.5cm; 24 x 17 1/4in
69.5 x 52cm; 27 1/2 x 20 1/2in (framed)

Property from a Private Collection, Notting Hill

Provenance
Sale, Christie's London, 5 November 1999, lot 83
Purchased by the present owners in the early 2000s

Exhibited
Athens, The British Council, John Craxton, 1946, no. 15 (as Boy with a Dog)
The London Gallery, John Craxton, 1949, no. 14 (as Shepherd Boy)
London, The Mayor Gallery, John Craxton, no. 10, 1950 (as Boy with a Sheep)

Literature
Ian Collins, John Craxton, Surrey, 2011, no. 105, p. 90, illustrated

I can't tell you how delicious this country is & the lovely hot sun all day and at night tavernas: hot prawns in olive oil & great wine & the soft sweet smell of greek pine trees. I shall never come home. how can I? (Craxton, Greece, 1946)

Painted on the island of Poros in 1946, Craxton included the present work in his first exhibition in Greece held at the British Council on Kolonaki Square in Athens that December, opened by the painter Nikos Ghika. The striking image of the boy with the animal across his shoulders gave rise to a number of works in which a shepherd is featured with a sheep in the same pose, notably the oils Greek Farm of 1946 and Shepherds near Knossos of 1947 (both private collection). It may well have been his success with this latter motif that led Craxton to re-title the work Boy with a Sheep for his 1949 London Gallery show, as written in his hand on the London Gallery label, which in turn was reduced to Shepherd Boy in the printed catalogue. The initials LG and MG also on the label seem to reference the London Gallery and possibly the artist Meraud Guinness whom he had met through Lucien Freud (fig. 1)

Ian Collin's lyrical and utterly absorbing biography John Craxton A Life of Gifts captures the artist's gilded existence as a young man to perfection. A natural charmer, with piercing good looks to match, Craxton had a winning way of navigating life with a fair degree of pluck and bountiful luck. His big break came with his chance meeting of the young, wealthy and generous aesthete Peter Watson in the early 1940s. Watson, who had launched Horizon magazine with Cyril Connolly and Stephen Spender, quickly took Craxton under his wing. He cultivated his interest in literature and music and the work of William Blake and Samuel Palmer in particular. Early on he published Craxton's drawings, and introduced him to a wealth of new friends, amongst them another protégé Lucien Freud and the influential Lady Norton, co-founder of the London Gallery, and wife of Sir Clifford Norton, British Ambassador to Greece.

Craxton and Freud became instant kindred spirits and inseparable, soon sharing a studio in London which their benefactor Watson was happy to finance. In the spring of 1946 Watson arranged for Craxton to have an exhibition at Galerie Gasser in Zurich. At the opening dinner Craxton sat next to Lady Norton. A passionate collector, decorator and lover of contemporary art, she answered Craxton's long held ambition to travel to Greece, and in style. As Collins puts it: 'Lady Norton had left a borrowed bomber in Milan during a mission to buy curtains for the threadbare embassy. She would give him a lift. The Craxton exhibition had barely opened when Craxton vanished' (Ian Collins, p. 141).

Craxton not only stayed at the Embassy - Lady Norton diplomatically arranged for him to stay in a room over a garage to appease her husband - but she also provided him with considerable largesse, including an allowance of £15 a month. Once again the artist had fallen on his feet. But following an Embassy dinner during which he drew the ire of guest of honour General Montgomery (Monty) of Alamein, Craxton was obliged to move on. Recommended by Patrick Leigh Fermor, who was working for the British Council in Athens and had become a good friend he headed for the island of Poros. There Craxton lodged with Efstathia Mastropetros, a widow with five children, in the best rooms in the house with a glorious outlook over the bay. It was the beginning of another happy and enduring friendship, the artist for ever after referring to the Mastrepetros family as his Greek cousins. Before Freud joined him on Poros that September, Craxton painted the present work.

We are grateful to Ian Collins and the Estate of John Craxton for their help in cataloguing the present work.