John Craske

John Craske (6 July 1881 – 26 August 1943) was an English artist who, without formal training, painted and later worked with coloured threads to create embroideries. Craske started working life as a deep sea fisherman sailing out of Grimsby, and later ran fish shops in Norfolk. Following a breakdown during World War I, he was discharged from military service and returned to Norfolk, where he took up painting and embroidery in his forties for health reasons. His artwork attracted the attention of British and American collectors and was exhibited in Norfolk, London, and the United States.

Early life John Craske was born on 6 July 1881 in the fishing community in Lower Sheringham, north Norfolk. He was the third of five sons and four daughters born to John Gladden and Mary Craske. His father was a deep sea fisherman. The family moved to Grimsby where Craske went to school until the age of 14 when he was expected to join his brothers on long, cold, gruelling and dangerous expeditions trawling for fish on sail-powered smacks (a contemporary studio photograph of Craske shows a young fisherman holding a length of fake paper rope, taken to leave some record in case he drowned). As a result, the sailing smacks were no longer competitive and the Craske family moved inland, to Dereham, in 1905. The family set up a fish business at 1 Wellington Road in Dereham selling wet and smoked fish and delivering fish to the surrounding villages with a white pony.

A member of the Salvation Army based in St Nicholas Street, just around the corner from this shop, Craske sang with the Salvation Army choir in the market place in Dereham. Here he met Laura Eke with whom he shared deep religious convictions. Laura was a member of the Primitive Methodist Chapel on Commercial Road, Dereham, where they were married on 22 July 1908.

The couple moved initially to Swanton Morley where Craske ran his fish round with two ponies and a pannier on each. However, as fresh fish from Lowestoft had to be collected from North Elmham railway station,

The 1911 United Kingdom census on 2 April recorded John, 29, and Laura, 28, living at Chapel Street, North Elmham, where Craske was recorded as a 'fish merchant', with George Baker employed as a 'fish hawker'. In Kelly's Directory of 1912, John Craske is listed at North Elmham as Craske & Son, fishmongers.

In 1914 they left North Elmham and returned to Dereham where they rented 42 Norwich Road. the Military Service Act was introduced to help fill the ranks, introducing compulsory conscription for the first time in Britain's history. Every unmarried man and childless widower between 18 and 41 was offered three choices: enlist at once, attest at once - under the Derby Scheme, or on 2 March 1916, be automatically deemed to have enlisted.

In May 1916 the Act was extended to married men. In Craske's second attestation for army service, on 26 May 1916 when he was aged 34 years and 10 months, he was rated C3 and so exempt from active service. The C3 designation meant he was "only suitable for sedentary work" but was fit to serve in home garrisons.

In 1917 Laura tore muscles in her side and the doctor said she must give up the work in the smoke house. That same week, Craske went into the army, unfit due to "mental stupor (Perm.)" who suggested that the sea air might cure him. They locked up the house and went to Grimsby to stay with his brothers, Edward and Robert, who took him out fishing. One day he seemed to ‘wake up’ and asked ‘Why am I here? This is not our home’. He and Laura immediately returned to Dereham. Needing to make a living Laura prayed for guidance and decided to look for a shop.

In April 1919 Craske found that 15 Norwich Street was empty and he was able to rent it.

In 1942 Craske was working on a canvas which was long and wide with 800 soldiers in boats and on the beaches depicting the Evacuation of Dunkirk. Craske had listened on the wireless to accounts of the small boats who sailed to rescue soldiers from the French coast in the historic World War II evacuation. This embroidery is now held by the Norfolk Museums Service.

In 1943 Craske was taken into hospital taking his canvas with him and continued working on Dunkirk right up to his death. A small area is unfinished. He died on 26 August 1943, and was buried in the cemetery on Cemetery Road in Dereham. Laura died in 1957 at 42 Norwich Road, and was buried next to her husband in Dereham cemetery, where the grave can still be seen.

Legacy After his death, Craske's work as an artist was recognised for its details of a bygone way of life, and his work was exhibited in the Glandford Shell Museum, Strangers' Hall Norwich and at Snape Maltings. His art also featured in the American British Art Center in New York, and in 1950 was exhibited at the Margaret Brown Gallery, Boston and the Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut. She felt that she had discovered Craske and wanted to protect his legacy and she wanted the body of work to be kept in East Anglia where she felt it belonged and so she gave most of what she owned to Peter Pears because she felt he understood her and her love of Craske.

A biography of Craske records:

"The display of forty-seven pictures at the twenty-fourth Aldeburgh Festival, in 1971, was the first major Craske retrospective, the nucleus formed by the Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland bequest and individual works lent by friends - Bea Howe, Gerald Finzi's wife, Janet Machen, Elizabeth Wade White and Valentine's solicitor Peg Manisty. A further group of six works came from John Duigan, son of Craske's doctor in Dereham who had originally accepted them in settlement of outstanding medical bills. The exhibition with a catalogue essay by Warner and an enthusiastic article by Bea Howe in Country Life, was such a success that other, more modest exhibitions were held at the festival in 1973, 1977 and 1980." There is also a considerable archive including photographs and correspondence between Craske and Laura and their American benefactors. The archive contains a typescript of John's own hand-written account of his life, entitled 'My Life and The Sea'.

A second exhibition was held in Dereham in 2004. In 2005, Craske's nephew, William Frederick Edward Craske (Bill) gave Craske's portrait, a painting and an embroidery to Sheringham Museum.

Many newspaper, magazine and scholarly articles have been written about Craske, his life with Laura and the works of art he created. A 2015 book Threads: The Delicate Life of John Craske by Julia Blackburn was launched with an exhibition of his work at Norwich University of the Arts gallery, curated by Blackburn and Professor Neil Powell, and was favourably reviewed.