Craigie Aitchison (painter)

John Ronald Craigie Aitchison CBE RSA RA (13 January 1926 – 21 December 2009) was a Scottish painter. He was best known for his many paintings of the Crucifixion, one of which hangs behind the altar in the chapter house of Liverpool Cathedral, 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".

His career-long fascination with the crucificion 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.

Aitchison was born in Edinburgh, the son of the lawyer, politician and judge Craigie Mason Aitchison. 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. His mother, Lady Aitchison, played international hockey. Her family owned Tulliallan, an estate in Fife, where Aitchison did some of his first landscape painting.

...
Wikipedia