John Christopherson was a painter of small, dreamlike townscapes and abstract paintings that combine an almost naïve intensity with great sophistication.

Born in Blackheath, London, in 1921, Christopherson began his working life at Shell-Mex House in 1938, a period when modern art started to be used in advertising. After a wartime illness, Christopherson worked at County Hall in London, choosing for his office wall a print of Paul Nash's Wood on the Downs and Nash's primaeval landscapes and magical moons, which were later to have a lasting influence on Christopherson's paintings.

In 1950, while working as a civil servant at the Geological Museum in South Kensington, he became interested in the French Art Brut movement and corresponded with Jean Dubuffet, who offered encouragement when Christopherson began to paint.

John Christopherson felt that his life in art did not begin until 1950 when he met Jacob Epstein and started to visit West End galleries - he said that it was a revelation that 'such a magical world co-existed on the same level and at the same time as the boring, prosaic one of rationing, coupons and the civil service', and he determined to enter it. In 1959, he resigned from his appointment in the civil service at the Geological Museum and became a full-time painter.

From boyhood, he was fascinated by the idea of antiquity. He was always interested in ancient stones, pavements, mosaics, archaeological sites, walls, and buildings that had gradually changed and been eroded by time. Walls with faded posters and graffiti particularly attracted him - he treasured and identified himself with what he described as the “forlorn poetry of the unregarded”.

He was of Cornish ancestry and regularly visited St Ives, home to many of the British artists of the 1950s whom he admired. However, his main influences were really from the Continent.

Christopherson exhibited his work from 1961 at the Leicester Galleries, the Marjorie Parr Gallery, Agnews and England & Co. His last exhibition was a retrospective in December 1995 at the Woodlands Art Gallery in Blackheath. He died in 1996, and the following year, there was a memorial exhibition at England & Co. accompanied by a publication about his life and work. His correspondence and scrapbooks are now in the Tate Archive.