BIOGRAPHY
1922
Born 3 October, in St John’s Wood, London, one of six children of Royal Academy of Music professor Harold Craxton and Essie Faulkner, a violinist.
1929-1936
Attends various private schools. Exhibits at the Bloomsbury Gallery in London in 1932 with fellow pupils of Betteshanger School in Kent, whose art teacher, Elsie Barling, is a key early influence.
1937
Visits Paris and admires Picasso’s newly painted Guernica.
1939
Draws models at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris.
1940
Attends Westminster Art School and the Central School of Art in London.
1941
First solo show at the Swiss Cottage Café in London. The Craxton family home is destroyed by a bomb. Meets patron Peter Watson and painter Lucian Freud.
1942
Watson funds adjoining studios for Craxton and Freud in St John’s Wood. Attends Goldsmiths College, London.
1943
Visits Pembrokeshire with Graham Sutherland, Freud and Watson.
1944
First solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in London. Produces colour lithographs and ink decorations for the anthology Visionary Poems and Passages or The Poet’s Eye selected by Geoffrey Grigson.
1945
Travels with Freud to the Scilly Isles.
1946
Returns to Paris. Watson arranges an exhibition at the Galerie Gasser in Zurich, where Craxton meets Lady Norton, wife of the British Ambassador to Greece, who takes him on to Athens. Arrives on Poros in June. Freud follows for an autumn and winter. Exhibits with the British Council in Athens.
1947
After a tour of the Cyclades and Dodecanese, Craxton visits Crete for the first time. Craxton and Freud exhibit Poros paintings at the London Gallery.

1948
Monograph by Geoffrey Grigson, John Craxton: Paintings and Drawings, is published by Horizon.
1949
Shows with the London Gallery and the British Council in Athens.
1951
Designs sets and costumes for a Covent Garden revival of the ballet Daphnis and Chloë, choreographed by Frederick Ashton. Exhibition of Greek pictures at the Leicester Galleries.
1952
Visits Chios.
1953
Visits Samos.
1954
Exhibition of Greek pictures at the Leicester Galleries.
1955-1956
Designs the cover for the book The Cretan Runner by George Psychoundakis, translated and introduced by Patrick Leigh Fermor. Stays with Paddy and Joan Leigh Fermor in the ancestral mansion of painter Niko Ghika on Hydra. Exhibition at the Leicester Galleries.
1958
Designs the cover for Patrick Leigh Fermor’s book Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese.
1959
Spends Christmas with the Ghikas and Leigh Fermors on Hydra.
1960
Moves to a Venetian house on the harbour at Chania, Crete.
1961
Exhibition at the Leicester Galleries.
1966
Sixth and last solo exhibition at the Leicester Galleries. Designs the cover for Patrick Leigh Fermor’s book Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece.
1967
Retrospective exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. Exiled from Greece after a military coup.
1971
Exhibition at Hamet Gallery, London.
1972
Exhibition at the University of Stirling, which commissions Craxton to design and execute a Greek-inspired tapestry with Dovecot Weavers.
1976
Returns to live and work on Crete.
1982
First solo exhibition with the Christopher Hull Gallery in London.
1984
Exhibition with Christopher Hull Gallery.
1985
Touring show travels to the British Council in Athens, the Chrysostomos Gallery on Crete and the Christopher Hull Gallery in London.
1987
Shows with Christopher Hull Gallery and in A Paradise Lost – the Neo-Romantic Imagination in Britain 1935-55 at the Barbican Art Gallery.
1993
Elected a Royal Academician. Final show with Christopher Hull Gallery features portraits from 1942 to 1992 and a catalogue note by David Attenborough.
1998-1999
Exhibition at Pallant House, Chichester.
2001
Exhibition at Art First, London.
2004
Recreates his original designs for a London revival of Frederick Ashton’s Daphnis and Chloe ballet, painting all the new sets by hand.
2006
In failing health, he leaves Crete for the last time but always hopes to return.
2009
Dies in London on 17 November, aged 87.
2010
Memorial service at St James’s Piccadilly. Memorial hang during the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
2011
Tate one-room show for publication of John Craxton monograph by Ian Collins (Lund Humphries).
2013-2014
John Craxton: A World of Private Mystery exhibition at Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
2015-2016
John Craxton: From Cranborne Chase to Crete tours from Dorset County Museum in Dorchester to Salisbury Museum.
2017-2018
Charmed Lives in Greece: Ghika, Craxton, Leigh Fermor exhibition tours from the A.G. Leventis Gallery in Nicosia to the Benaki Museum in Athens and the British Museum. It receives rave reviews and around 100,000 visitors. A launch exhibition is held at Osborne Samuel in London – John Craxton in Greece: The Unseen Works.
2021
Publication of the biography John Craxton: A Life of Gifts, by Ian Collins (Yale University Press). Osborne Samuel exhibition John Craxton: Drawn from Darkness – Paintings and Drawings 1940-1946.
2022
Centenary touring exhibition opens at the Benaki Museum in Athens, and John Craxton: A Life of Gifts is published in Greek by Patakis.