By 1945 Craxton was becoming well regarded in the London art scene and some might say it was in these postwar days that he was at the height of his fame. He and Freud, with whom at this time he was inseparable, were part of the group of artists associated with ‘Horizon’ that included Graham Sutherland, Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde and were hailed by Herbert Reed as a central figures in the ‘fate of modern painting’. John Lehmann used both Craxton and Freud’s work to illustrate a volume of Penguin New Writing and Peter Watson, who co-curated the first exhibition of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, chose Craxton, along with Freud, Bacon, Hepworth and Moore, to be shown with the great European modernists, including Klee, Matisse, Giacometti and Picasso.

Like Freud, the practice of drawing was a vital part of his development at this time, as was a fasciation with nature. Following in the footsteps of Albrecht Durer and Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardon, Craxton and Freud sought out opportunities to draw animals, particularly deceased specimens as these could be observed more keenly. See Freud’s ‘Rabbit on a Chair’, 1944 and 'Chicken on a Bamboo Table', 1944. Ian Collins writes humorously of how a dead monkey from the local pet shop had to be hidden in the oven in Freud and Craxton’s shared flat when Kenneth Clark and his wife came to tea and how a lobster decayed unpleasantly because Freud took so long to draw it.

Craxton’s approach was not as painstakingly detailed and slow as Freud’s: in this work, through his characteristic bold clean lines, he expresses a sense of tenderness for the hare but also adeptly portrays the vitality of the animal, capturing its physical presence almost entirely though the clean outline without the need for further detail. His clear, fluid lines which sweep across the paper and almost sculptural strokes evoke the sense of the mass and structure of the hare whilst the whiskers and nose are so delicately drawn that you almost catch the twitch of its nose whilst the ears seem to be captured mid-movement. It is with this same remarkable ability to draw line, that Craxton would go on to capture the taverna dwellers, cats and goats of Greece in later years. Interestingly, Craxton has placed the hare on a table next to a delicately rendered apple. Notably this apple is absent in the oil version now in the collection of the Pallant House Gallery.