Craigie
Aitchison
catalogue Raisonné
OF THE PAINTINGS
THE project
Craigie Aitchison (1926–2009) was one of the most original, personally distinctive artists at work in post-war Britain. In collaboration with the Estate of Craigie Aitchison, the Craigie Aitchison Catalogue Raisonné Project will work towards a publication that comprehensively records and illustrates the artist’s paintings.
Help Locate Paintings
Collectors, organisations and members of the public are invited to share information about the current whereabouts and current or historic ownership of paintings by Craigie Aitchison. This information will support the preparation of the catalogue raisonné of his paintings.
Please include as much information as possible about the artwork you wish to submit. Where possible, this should include:
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Title
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Date
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Medium
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Dimensions
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Inscriptions
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The contents of any label attached to the reverse of the canvas or frame.
Where applicable, please also provide information about the painting’s place and date of purchase, exhibition history, and whether it has been mentioned or illustrated in books or other publications about Aitchison.
All personal data and information provided will be treated in confidence, we will not disclose any personal data provided to any third parties without your consent. Please contact us for full details of our privacy policy and information about how we process your data.
Email submission should include images of the front and back of the painting.
The catalogue raisonné will not include works on paper. This includes drawings, watercolours and prints. Although the submission of autograph works on paper (drawings, watercolours, gouaches, etc.) is welcomed, no prints should be submitted through this form.
Contact us directly via info@craigieaitchison.com or fill out the form below.
Craigie
Aitchison
(1926–2009)
Craigie Aitchison was born in Edinburgh in 1926, and studied Law at Edinburgh University (1944-46) and then at the Middle Temple in London in 1948. He changed career in 1950, returning to Edinburgh to practice painting before studying at the Slade School of Fine Art (1952-54) under William Coldstream and Robert Medley, and alongside Paula Rego, Michael Andrews and Euan Uglow. In 1955 Aitchison was awarded the British Council Italian Government Scholarship for painting and travelled to Italy, which had a profound influence upon his work. His first solo exhibition was at the Beaux Arts Gallery in London in 1959, and he continued on to have significant retrospectives at the Serpentine Gallery in 1981, at the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow in 1996 and at the Royal Academy in London in 2003. In 1994 he won the first ever Jerwood Painting Prize and won the Nordstern Art Prize in 2000. He was elected an Associate Member of the Royal Academy of Art in 1978 and a Senior Member in 1988, and he was made a CBE in 1999. He died in 2009.
Aitchison is particularly well known for his still-lifes, landscapes, nudes, portraits, dogs, and his idiosyncratic crucifixions and, alongside this subject matter, for his distinctive style consisting of simplistic, flat, stylised forms constructed through areas of thinly applied, yet pure and luminous colour. Uniting British Romanticism with an inheritance from the Italian Renaissance of interest in the relationship between line and colour, light and dark, subject and landscape setting, Aitchison produces work of powerful naiveté. Examples of Aitchison's religious paintings include a Crucifixion loaned to King's College Chapel since 1994 and Cavalry (1996-98) commissioned by Liverpool Cathedral. Aitchison also collaborated with Glyndebourne Opera House, decorating the Gallery Stalls in 2005 and producing various programme covers and prints alongside contributors such as David Hockney, Mary Fedden and Sir Hugh Casson.
