Queer Places:
12 India St, Edinburgh EH3 6EZ, UK
Montpelier Walk, London SW7 1JH, UK
19 Adam's Row, London W1K 2LA, UK
Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, Gower St, Kings Cross, London WC1E 6BT, UK
Slade Hostel, 28 Cartwright Gardens, London WC1H 9AZ, UK
22a Lower Marsh, London SE1 7RJ, UK
32 St Mary's Gardens, London SE11 4UF, UK
Montecastelli, Località Madonna a Brolio, 53013 Gaiole In Chianti SI
John
Ronald Craigie Aitchison CBE RSA RA (13 January 1926 – 21 December 2009) was a
Scottish painter.[1] He was best known for his many paintings of the
Crucifixion,[2] one of which hangs behind the altar in the chapter house of
Liverpool Cathedral,[3] Italian landscapes, and portraits (mainly of black
men, or of dogs). His simple style with bright, childlike colours defied
description, and was compared to the Scottish Colourists, primitivists or
naive artists, although Brian Sewell dismissed him as "a painter of too
considered trifles".[1] His career-long fascination with the crucifixion was
triggered by a visit to see Salvador Dalí's Christ of St John of the Cross in
1951 after it was acquired by the Kelvingrove Gallery.[4] Several of his works
are held in the collection of the Tate Gallery.[11] He designed the Tate
Gallery's Christmas tree and Christmas card in 1992.[12] Birmingham Museums &
Art Gallery[13] and the National Galleries of Scotland[14] also own works.
Aitchison was born at 12 India Street, Edinburgh, the son of the lawyer, politician and judge Craigie Mason Aitchison and Charlotte Forbes Jones.[1][5] His grandfather, Reverend James Aitchison, was minister at the United Free Church Erskine Kirk in Falkirk. Aitchison was educated at Loretto School, Musselburgh, East Lothian until the death of his father in 1941 and then at home by private tutors.[6] His mother, Lady Aitchison, played international hockey.[7] Her family owned Tulliallan, an estate in Fife, where Aitchison did some of his first landscape painting.
In 1939 - 40 the family moved temporarily to manse near the "Dunmore Pineapple" on mother’s family estate near Stirling.
He was rejected for military service in the Second World War on medical grounds. He studied law at Edinburgh University from 1944 to 1946.
In 1948 he took lodgings in Montpelier Walk and enrolled at Middle Temple,
City of London, to study law.
He returned to Edinburgh in 1950 to practise painting. He converted a mews house in Church Lane, Edinburgh, behind
his family home in India Street into studio. He painted mostly still-lives. He
showed his very first pictures at Elizabeth Bell Flower Shop next-door to his studio.
In 1951 - 52 he moved into lodgings at 19 Adam’s Row, Mayfair. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1952 to 1954 under William Coldstream and Robert Medley. Aitchison won a prize for the best still life his second year. Fellow students included Michael Andrews, Tony Pacitti, Philip Sutton, Victor Willing, Paula Rego, Myles Murphy and Euan Uglow. Aitchison remained friends with Uglow, and was best man at his wedding.
In 1953 he moved from Gloucester Place, Marlyebone, first to Portobello Road and from there to Gower Street.
He then moved to Slade Hostel, Cartwright Gardens, near Euston. Eighteen months later
he moved with fellow students Myles Murphy to 22a Lower Marsh, near Waterloo Station, London.
Aitchison was one of "Six Young Contemporaries" at an exhibition at the
Gimpel Fils gallery in 1954.
Aitchison was awarded a British Council scholarship in 1955 to study in Italy. He toured the country, and was influenced by early Italian painting, particularly Piero della Francesca.[5]
His first solo exhibition was held at the Beaux Arts Gallery in London in
1959, and he held further solo exhibitions throughout the United Kingdom.
In 1962 he met professional model Georgeous Macaulay while teaching part-time at Regent Street Polytechnic.
He began extended series of nudes and portraits lasting until 1976.
In 1963 he returned from Scotland with his mother, Lady Aitchison, to live full-time in London.
They moved to 32 St Mary’s Gardens, Kennington, a Victorian town house he
occupied for 35 years.
His paintings were included in many group shows around the world from 1964,
and in three retrospective exhibitions.[8]
He exhibited at Marlborough Fine Art in London in 1968. He was a part-time
teacher at the Chelsea School of Art from 1968 to 1984.
He bought Wayney, the first of his woolly Bedlington Terriers, from Crufts
in 1971. He continued to own Bedlington Terriers over a 28-year period; in the
later part of his life he owned three. They featured in a number of his
paintings.[15]
In 1975 he acquired a house at Montecastelli near Siena and spent eighteen months working in Italy.
Aitchison became an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1978, and was elected
as one of the 80 Members of the Royal Academy (or Royal Academicians) in
1988.[8] He resigned from the Academy in 1997 in protest over the display of
Marcus Harvey's work Myra,[9] but rejoined in 1998.[10]
He won the Royal Academy's Korn Ferry International Award in 1989 and in
1991, won the first £30,000 Jerwood Painting Prize, sponsored by The Sunday
Telegraph in 1994, and won the Nordstern Art Prize in 2000.
In 1996 he was commissioned to paint a mural of Calvary – a landscape
illuminated by a mystical light – for the Gothic Revivalist Truro Cathedral in
Cornwall. In 1997, he was commissioned to paint Calvary for Liverpool
Cathedral, and he created a design for a Christmas stamp for the Royal Mail in
1999. Further sacred works by Aitchison are held the chapel of King's College,
Cambridge.
He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1999.
Retrospectives of his work were held at the Serpentine Gallery in 1981, at
Harewood House near Leeds in 1994, and at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow
in 1996. Other shows were held at the Museum of Modern Art, Powys in 2001 and
at the Royal Academy in London in 2003.
My published books:
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