Walter Crane | |
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 Walter Crane, c. 1886 | |
| Born | (1845-08-15)15 August 1845 Liverpool,Lancashire, England |
| Died | 14 March 1915(1915-03-14) (aged 69) Horsham,West Sussex, England |
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| Awards | Albert Medal(1904) |
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Walter Crane (15 August 1845 – 14 March 1915) was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most influential, and among the most prolific, children's book creators of his generation[1] and, along withRandolph Caldecott andKate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nurserymotif that the genre of English children's illustrated literature would exhibit in its developmental stages in the later 19th century.
Crane's work featured some of the more colourful and detailed beginnings of the child-in-the-garden motifs that would characterize many nursery rhymes and children's stories for decades to come. He was part of theArts and Crafts movement and produced an array of paintings, illustrations, children's books, ceramic tiles, wallpapers and other decorative arts. Crane is also remembered for his creation of a number of iconic images associated with the internationalsocialist movement.
Crane was the second son ofThomas Crane, a portrait painter and miniaturist, and Marie Crane (née Kearsley), the daughter of a prosperous malt-maker.[2] His elder brotherThomas would also go into illustration, and sisterLucy was a noted writer. He was a fluent follower of the newer art movements and he came to study and appreciate the detailed senses of thePre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and was also a diligent student of the renowned artist and criticJohn Ruskin. A set of coloured page designs to illustrateTennyson's "Lady of Shalott" gained the approval of wood-engraverWilliam James Linton to whom Walter Crane was apprenticed for three years in 1859–62.[3] As a wood-engraver he had abundant opportunity for the minute study of the contemporary artists whose work passed through his hands, of Pre-RaphaelitesDante Gabriel Rossetti andJohn Everett Millais, as well as SirJohn Tenniel, the illustrator ofAlice in Wonderland, andFrederick Sandys. He was a student who admired the masters of theItalian Renaissance, however he was more influenced by theElgin marbles in theBritish Museum. A further and important element in the development of his talent was the study ofJapanese colour-prints, the methods of which he imitated in a series oftoy books, which started a new fashion.[4]
From the early 1880s, initially underWilliam Morris's influence, Crane was closely associated with thesocialist movement. He did as much as Morris himself to bring art into the daily life of all classes. With this object in view he devoted much attention to designs fortextiles andwallpapers, and to house decoration; but he also used his art for the direct advancement of the Socialist cause. As a member of theSocialist League, he created the1885 cover illustration for their manifesto. For a long time he provided the weekly cartoons for the socialist organsJustice,Commonweal andThe Clarion. Many of these were collected asCartoons for the Cause.
Crane also devoted much time and energy to non-political societies, such as theArt Workers Guild, of which he was master in 1888 and 1889 and to theArts and Crafts Exhibition Society, which he helped to found in 1888.[5] He was a Vice President of theHealthy and Artistic Dress Union, a movement begun in 1890, whose aim was to promote loose-fitting clothing, in opposition to "stiffness, tightness and weight".[6] They produced numerous pamphlets setting out their cause, including one entitled "How to Dress Without a Corset" which Crane illustrated.
Although not himself ananarchist, Crane contributed to several libertarian publishers, including Liberty Press andFreedom Press. He is credited with the design and decoration of the front façade of "The Bomb Shop",Henderson's bookshop at 66 Charing Cross Road specializing in left-wing and radical literature.[7]
Crane was controversial in his support of the four Chicago anarchists executed in 1887 in connection with theHaymarket affair. Visiting the United States for the first time in connection with an exhibition of his work in 1891, Crane scandalized polite society by appearing at a Boston anarchist meeting and expressing the opinion that the Haymarket defendants had been put to death wrongfully.[8] Returning to his hotel, Crane found a letter stating that he faced "hopeless ruin" among American patrons of the arts owing to his support of those who were commonly considered to be terrorist conspirators in public opinion of the day.[8] Financial support was withdrawn and planned dinners in Crane's honour were cancelled.[8] In response to the controversy, Crane wrote a letter to the press explaining that he had not meant to cause insult and did not himself favour the use of explosives, but had merely been expressing his principled opinion that those convicted were innocent of the crime for which they were charged.[8] The incident was memorialized in the press as "probably the most dramatic episode" in the artist's career.[8] Crane publicly criticised the British government for theSecond Boer War and joined theStop the War Committee.[9]
Walter Crane married embroiderer Mary Frances Andrews in 1871[10] and they proceeded on a two-year honeymoon. In Italy, the newlyweds made contact with artists from other countries, while Crane's illustrations were published in England.[citation needed] The couple went on to have three children with Crane featuring himself, his wife and one of their sons in his 1885 watercolour,The Apotheosis of Italian Art.[10][11] Both he and his wife enjoyed giving enormous costume parties, so that the couple's New Year parties were considered a major event in London's artistic social calendar.[12] Late in 1914, at the age of 68, Frances Crane went on a rest cure inKingsnorth,Kent, but committed suicide in a tragic train incident. The coroner's jury ruled it to be a case of temporary insanity.[12]
Walter Crane died on 14 March 1915 inHorsham Hospital, West Sussex, three months after his wife. His body was cremated at theGolders Green Crematorium, where his ashes remain. He was survived by their three children, Beatrice, Lionel and Lancelot.[12]
In 1862, his pictureThe Lady of Shalott was exhibited at theRoyal Academy, but the academy steadily refused his maturer work and after the opening of theGrosvenor Gallery in 1877, he ceased to send pictures toBurlington House.[5] In 1863 the printerEdmund Evans employed Crane to illustrateyellowbacks, and in 1865 they began to collaborate ontoy books ofnursery rhymes andfairy tales.[13] From 1865 to 1876 Crane and Evans produced two to three toy books each year.[14]
These are a few of his illustration suites: In 1864 he began to illustrate a series of sixpenny toy books ofnursery rhymes in three colours forEdmund Evans. He was allowed more freedom in a series beginning withThe Frog Prince (1874) which showed markedly the influence ofJapanese art, and of a long visit to Italy following on his marriage in 1871. His work was characterized by sharp outlines and flat tints.[15]The Baby's Opera was a book of English nursery songs available in 1877 with Evans, and a third series of children's books with the collective titleRomance of the Three R's provided a regular course of instruction in art for the nursery. In his early "Lady of Shalott", the artist had shown his preoccupation with unity of design in book illustration by printing in the words of the poem himself, in the view that this union of the calligrapher's and the decorator's art was one secret of the beauty of the oldilluminated books.[5]
He followed the same course inThe First of May: A Fairy Masque by his friendJohn Wise, text and decoration being in this case reproduced byphotogravure.The Goose Girl illustration taken from his beautifulHousehold Stories from Grimm (1882) was done again as a bigwatercolour and then reproduced intapestry byWilliam Morris.Flora's Feast, A Masque of Flowers hadlithographic reproductions of Crane's line drawings washed in with watercolour; he also decorated in colourThe Wonder Book ofNathaniel Hawthorne, andMargaret Deland'sOld Garden.[5] During the eighties and nineties he illustrated 16 children's novels byMrs. Molesworth in black and white. In 1894 he collaborated with William Morris in the page decoration ofThe Story of the Glittering Plain, published at theKelmscott Press, which was executed in the style of 16th-century Italian and Germanwoodcuts.[16] Crane illustrated editions ofEdmund Spenser'sFaerie Queene (19 pts., 1894–1896) andThe Shepheard's Calendar, as well asAli Baba and the Forty Thieves (1873),The Happy Prince and Other Stories byOscar Wilde (1888), an edition ofArthurian Legends,A Flower Wedding.[15] and in 1900Judge Parry's re-narration ofCervantes'Don Quixote of the Mancha.
Crane also illustratedNellie Dale's booksOn Teaching English Reading,Steps to Reading,First Primer,Second Primer,Infant Reader,Book I, andBook II. These were most probably completed between 1898 and 1907.
Crane wrote and illustrated three books of poetry,Queen Summer (1891),Renascence (1891), andThe Sirens Three (1886).[5]
Crane's earliest stained glass window designs were some American commissions with glass made byWilliam Morris. He then had a British commission – the windows for the newAgapemonite church of theArk of the Covenant in London. These designs are a mixture ofArt Nouveau floral works on the side windows and depictions of sin, shame and the translations of Enoch and Elijah. They were completed by Sylvester Sparrow[17] and have been described byEnglish Heritage as Crane's "most significant work in this medium", and in the justification for listing the church as Grade II* "the stained glass is extraordinary and has more than special interest in the context of Arts and Crafts stained glass".[18]
His own easel pictures, chiefly allegorical in subject, among themThe Bridge of Life (1884) andThe Mower (1891), were exhibited regularly at the Grosvenor Gallery and later at theNew Gallery.Neptune's Horses was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1893, and with it may be classed hisRainbow and the Wave.[5]
His varied work includes examples of plasterrelief,tiles,stained glass,pottery,wallpaper, andtextile designs, in all of which he applied the principle that in purely decorative design "the artist works freest and best without direct reference to nature, and should have learned the forms he makes use of by heart". An exhibition of his work of different kinds was held at theFine Art Society's galleries in Bond Street in 1891, and taken to the United States in the same year by the artist himself. It was afterwards exhibited in Germany, Austria and Scandinavia.[5]
Crane was elected a member of theInstitute of Painters in Water Colours in 1882, resigning in 1886; two years later he became an associate of theWater Colour Society (1888); he was an examiner for theScience and Art Department at theSouth Kensington Museum; director of design at theManchester Municipal School (1894); art director ofReading College (1896); and in 1898 for a short time principal of theRoyal College of Art, where he planned a new curriculum intended to bring students into closer contact with tools and materials.[19] His lectures at Manchester were published with illustrated drawings asThe Bases of Design (1898) andLine and Form (1900).The Decorative Illustration of Books, Old and New (2nd ed., London and New York, 1900) is a further contribution to theory. A well-known portrait of Crane byGeorge Frederick Watts was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1893.[5]
In 1887, Crane was commissioned byEmilie Barrington to paint a series of murals to decorate the newly constructed Red Cross Hall inSouthwark, a project conceived by the housing campaignerOctavia Hill.[20] Crane produced designs for nine panels, which were displayed at the 1890Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society show. Ultimately, only three designs were converted into full-size murals, these being:Alice Ayres (1890), depicting the heroine of the Union Street fire which had occurred in 1885 just a few streets away;[21]Jamieson (1892), depicting two Scottish railway workers, Alex Jamieson and his nephew Alexander, who lost their lives in 1874 while working on the Glasgow and Paisley line;[22] and Rescue from a Well (1894), depicting George Eales, a 58-year-old labourer who in December 1887 atDummer, nearBasingstoke in Hampshire, descended into a well to rescue a five-year-old child. After 1894, no further murals were created, partly due to shortages in funding and other commitments, but also because it was discovered that the gas lighting in the hall was damaging the paintings.[23] The Red Cross Hall is now in private hands and the status of the murals is unknown.
A large mosaic,The Sphere and Message of Art, designed by Crane, was intended for the façade of theWhitechapel Art Gallery at the time of its construction in 1898. Sadly, sufficient funds were not forthcoming, resulting instead in a frontage clad in buff terracotta tiles. (The drawing still exists.)
Crane was much admired in Hungary and in 1900Radisics Jenő [hu], the director of theBudapest Museum of Applied Arts, organised a retrospective of his work there. Crane visited the city in the autumn, was feted, gave lectures and visited Transylvania. He went to Kolozsvár (nowCluj-Napoca), Bánffyhunyad (nowHuedin), and Kalotaszeg (nowȚara Călatei) in search of Hungarian traditional art. He recorded the visit inIdeals in Art. Zsuzsa Gonda in her review of Crane’s visit says that it is one of the most extensively documented events in the artistic life of the country in that period. The welcome extended to him was not entirely personal, however: he was the representative of England, the nation that sheltered Kossuth and took him to its heart.
One of Crane's last major works was hislunettes at theRoyal West of England Academy, which were painted in 1913.
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![King Midas with his daughter, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1893 edition of A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys[24]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aMidas_gold2.jpg)
![Illustration for The Man That Pleased None from Baby's Own Aesop, an 1887 children's edition of Aesop's fables[25]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aCan%2527t_please_everyone2.jpg)
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![Comic-like illustration for "Puss in Boots" from The Marquis of Carabas' Picture Book[26]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWalter_Crane-Cat05.jpg)
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Crane, Walter".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 366–367.
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