Craigie Aitchinson

Craigie Aitchison was a Scottish painter best known for his rich, color-stained canvases. His work displays a fascination for crucifixion scenes, small dogs and horses, and still lifes, all set within sparse, luminous landscapes that have an overall transparent glow. Similar to painters as varied as Piero della Francesca, Milton Avery, and William Blake, Aitchison’s paintings have a mystical quality. Born on January 13, 1926 in Edinburgh, United Kingdom, he studied law at Edinburgh University before attending the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Like Henri Matisse, Aitchison preferred painting to law and possessed an innate understanding of color and the objects around him. The artist became an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1978 and had several retrospectives of his work exhibited during his lifetime at the Serpentine Gallery in London, Harewood House in Leeds, and the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, among others. The artist died on December 21, 2009 in London, United Kingdom. His works are in the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland, the Tate Gallery in London, and the National Museum Wales in Cardiff, among others.