An Englishman's Odyssey
On a cold January morning in 1962 Ælred Bartlett set off from Victoria Station equipped with little more than a paint box, easel and donkey jacket.
Bartlett’s early career as artist and designer had been interrupted by the 1939-45 war and then by business and family commitments. In 1956, however, the search for suitable materials for his church restoration work took him to Italy, Greece and the Middle East.
His early love of the classics and an enduring spirit of adventure were rekindled in Greece particularly, where - through a cousin working at the British Archaeological School in Athens - Bartlett made a number of Greek friends in the eastern Peloponnese. It was here that he returned in 1962 with the express intention of resuming his life as a painter. His many rural and coastal landscapes of this period reflect his love of the area and its people.
A year after his first visit, with the encouragement of local friends, Bartlett bought a plot of land in a nearby coastal valley. Over subsequent years he designed and built a simple house in the traditional local style, where he intended to settle on reaching retirement age in 1983. Although ill health forced him to abandon that plan, he continued painting at his London studio, using sketches and photographs made on subsequent visits to Greece.
You can find out more about Bartlett's artistic career and output in other sections of this site.