(1926–2009)

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 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.