William Crozier
Artist
By Fiona Green
I was introduced to Soho by Bill, when I was 18, when we were lovers. An irish/ scot he was a marvellous colourist & mentor.He was also a friend of artists Roberts MacBryde & Colquhoun.He was my teacher at Corsham art school & he loved Soho. We met at the French pub often from 1961 - 1963 & again in later years. His painting shown here is a portrait of me entitled Rage Girl 1962. Shortly afterwards,I met & married another Soho habitue,writer & publisher,Martin Green, but Bill remained a friend & even came to live with our family for a time in the 70's. Soho was wild then. Full of hoods & gangsters, & charmers, like Gaston Berlemont who ran the French & was the most gracious publican I had the privelege to meet. Quite different to Muriel Belcher, a few doors up at the Colony Club.She would swear like a gutter-snipe whereas Gaston,the gentleman, would kiss my wrist as he poured me into a cab. Bill & I would go from the French, northwards to the Caves de France or the Colony rooms, & further north across Oxford Street to Fitzrovia, or south to the Kismet club. The Kismet was run by "Maltese Mary" Douse. She kept all Francis Bacon's cheques & said one day she would sell them for the signatures!
When I was forced out of my London flat by an unscrupulous landlord in 2012, I saved time by selling a painting Bill had given me as a wedding present,which is now in the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
Bill died in July 2011 aged 81
William Crozier :Edited by Katharine Crouan,Lund Humphries, 2007
William Crozier : The Edge of Landscape : Irish Museum of Modern Art,2017
www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/.../william-crozier-obituary - Cached
See Page 144 'The Visitors Book' (in Frances Bacon's Shadow) Jon Lys Turner published by Constable,London