The art dealer, Christopher Hull, has died. The Times' obituary describes him as “the most approachable of West End dealers, always happy to chat to anyone who wandered into the gallery”. This was certainly my experience when, in 1993, I wandered into a John Craxton exhibition at the Motcomb Street gallery. For the half hour before the pubs opened I was regaled with amusing anecdotes. One story concerned Craxton and Lucian Freud sharing a studio in the 1940s. A policeman apprehended the artists late one night; Freud sporting a pair of tartan trousers, both, perhaps, the worse for drink. The policeman asked their names. On being told Freud’s, he said,
'Ah ha. I thought by the look of your trousers you were a foreigner'
They are recalled during the same period in the poet, John Heath-Stubbs’ autobiography. He describes Craxton and Freud as indulging in all the usual antics of the young, such as “putting toffee in each others ears”. Happy days.
Craxton has Sussex connections. Unhappy attendance at the Prebendal Choir School in Chichester was relieved by holidays at Selsey Bill in the ex-Army hut purchased by his father with royalties from his song 'Mavis', made popular by the Irish tenor, John McCormack. Harold Craxton was a pianist, musicologist and Professor of Piano forte (at the Royal Academy of Music).
This week's All Saints film concerns piano playing, as do so many recent films - 'The Piano', 'The Pianist', 'The Piano Teacher', 'The Page Turner'. I ponder this, listening to my daughter practicing her scales and recall yet again the complaint in Samuel Beckett's 'Embers'
“It was not enough to drag her into the world- now she must play the piano”.