(b Liverpool, 15 Aug 1845; d Horsham, W. Sussex, 14 March 1915). English painter, illustrator, designer, writer and teacher. He showed artistic inclinations as a boy and was encouraged to draw by his father, the portrait painter and miniaturist Thomas Crane (1808-59). A series of illustrations to Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott (Cambridge, MA, Harvard U., Houghton Lib.) was shown first to Ruskin, who praised the use of colour, and then to the engraver William James Linton, to whom Crane was apprenticed in 1859. From 1859 to 1862 Crane learnt a technique of exact and economical draughtsmanship on woodblocks. His early illustrative works included vignette wood-engravings for John R. Capel Wise's The New Forest: Its History and its Scenery (1862).

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For more information on Walter Crane, visit Britannica.com.

(1845-1915)

A leading British designer, illustrator, and painter, Crane was a prominent figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement and influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite painters. He travelled and exhibited widely in Europe and the United States of America and was also a significant and influential writer and lecturer on design matters, a socialist thinker and propogandist, as well as an important force in progressive design education, having been appointed as principal of the Royal College of Art, London, in 1898. After an early apprenticeship in wood engraving Crane steadily built up a reputation as an illustrator in the 1860s. By the early 1870s his work showed the influence of Japanese woodblock prints alongside an increasing mastery of colour, particularly in a number of successful children's books. During these years he also worked on decorative ceramic designs for Josiah Wedgwood (1867-71), on tiles for Maws (1874), and, later, on various ceramic commissions for Pilkington's Tile and Pottery Company (from 1901). Furthermore, Crane was a prolific wallpaper designer, producing more than 50 designs for Jeffrey & Co. from 1874 onwards, and also worked in the field of printed and woven textiles from the late 1880s. Other fields in which Crane made contributions included stained glass and mosaic design, furniture, metalwork, carpet design, and embroidery. In 1884 he became a founder member of the Art Workers' Guild, going on to become the first president of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1888 when a number of members of the Guild seceded in order to set up a new organization more committed to the public promotion and exhibition of their creative work. Crane played an important role in British design education, becoming head of design at Manchester School of Art in 1893, working briefly at the University of Reading in 1897 before being appointed as principal of the Royal College of Art in 1898, a post he held for a year. Crane's international reputation gathered pace during the 1890s: he visited the United States in 1890-1; a retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Fine Art Society, London, in 1891 before touring the United States and Europe; and his work was also shown at Samuel Bing's celebrated Galerie l'Art Nouveau which opened in Paris in 1895. There was also increasing and favourable coverage of Crane's work in reviews in leading magazines. A number of his lectures were published, including his Cantor Lectures on The Decorative Illustration of Books (1896), The Bases of Design (1898), and Line and Form (1900). His books included The Claims of Decorative Art (1892), Ideals in Art (1905), An Artist's Reminiscences (1907), and William Morris to Whistler (1911).

Crane, Walter (1845–1915), British illustrator, designer, teacher, and painter whose popular toybooks for children helped to bring inexpensively coloured books to a greater mass audience. He was born in Liverpool and died in London at the age of 69. Trained in wood engraving, he knew the printing process and was able to bring his skill to take advantage of the developing technology of his day in the field of children's books. He was a politically involved artist who also changed the recognition which an artist received in the publication of his books.

Crane's father was an unsuccessful artist and portraitist who nevertheless encouraged his son's early attempts at drawing. Shortly before his father's death, Walter entered a three‐year apprenticeship with a wood engraver at the age of 13. His work was in drawing for the block, and he made vignettes and sketches for advertising cuts. After attending classes at Heatherley's Art School and selling freelance work, Crane made the acquaintance of the Victorian printer Edmund Evans, who first used him for drawing cover pictures. Evans worked with Crane (also Kate Greenaway and Randolph Caldecott) on a series of cheap picture books known as ‘toybooks’, indicating they were for children and were in colour, published by George Routledge and Frederick Warne in the latter half of the 19th century. The first of these bearing Crane's name appeared around 1865 and included Farmyard Alphabet, Cock Robin, The House that Jack Built, and Sing a Song of Sixpence. Crane eventually produced about 50 volumes in this series, which specialized in nursery rhymes (Old Mother Hubbard, 1, 2, Buckle my Shoe, and This Little Pig Went to Market), fairy tales (The Frog Prince, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Cinderella), and educational books (Multiplication Tables in Verse, Grammar in Rhyme, and Baby's Own Alphabet). In addition, he illustrated 45 books written by others, including Nathaniel Hawthorne's A Wonderbook for Boys and Girls (1892), Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888), and 13 books for Mary Molesworth, an extremely popular and prolific children's writer.

In his pictorial style, Crane was influenced not only by the techniques he worked in but also Japanese woodcuts, which had made their way to Europe. He used strong outline, vertical lines, and bright colours, and signed many of his pictures with a small monogram of his initials inside a circle with a drawing of a crane. His illustrations were frequently of an architectural nature, and often he would make decisions about colour once his line drawings were cut into the wood blocks and proofs returned to him. As photographic printing methods replaced the woodblocks, he quickly adapted to the new techniques. His pictures were busy and filled to the edges, with costume, floor tiling, vases, flowers, figured carpets, and decorative items which encouraged others to steal his patterns. As a result, he began to market his own fabric and wallpaper designs and promoted the Arts and Crafts movement associated with William Morris, with whom he also campaigned for socialist political causes. He served as the first president of the Arts and Crafts Society in 1888 and joined the Fabians in 1885. When his pictures were reprinted without his permission, he took control of his art and his name appears on several titles, such as Walter Crane's Painting Book (1889). At the end of his life, he turned his attention to education and served in leadership positions in the Manchester School of Art and the Royal College of Art in South Kensington. In addition to a volume of verse and his autobiography An Artist's Reminiscences (1907), he wrote several influential books on his theories of art and design, Of the Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New (1896), The Bases of Design (1898), and Line and Form (1900). Although he made paintings throughout his life, he never achieved fame for this form of his work; the formality of his carefully designed compositions for children's books were thought stilted in easel paintings.

To contrast his styles, Beauty and the Beast (1874) portrays the beast as a tusked and monocled wart hog, decked out in elaborate and colourful costume, seated on a settee, surrounded by mandolin, gold chandelier, tea set, and leopard skin rug. Beauty's robe, murals, fans, and gloves are all ornately figured with exotic animals and scenes from mythology. Household Stories from the Collection of the Brothers Grimm, published eight years later in 1882 with a translation of Kinder‐ und Hausmärchen by Crane's sister Lucy, is lavishly illustrated in black‐and‐white wood engravings with head pieces, friezes, tail pieces, and full‐page pictures with a blank sheet behind. His pictures for this volume explain, symbolize, and elaborate 52 fairy tales, emphasizing the light and dark of the stories as well as positioning them in a timeless landscape of the past. This is a respectful volume, which highlights the artist (a table of contents lists the pictures but not the stories), portrays the characters as adults, and illustrates just what pictures can add to storytelling. Drawings are enclosed in architectural frames, often with quotes and objects which symbolize the themes of the stories.

He married Mary Frances Andrews in 1871, and they had five children, two of whom died as infants. At the end of his life he was much honoured in Britain as well as several European countries. Though he felt limited by his fame as an illustrator of works for children, he brought great respect to this craft. His gift was in bringing great animation to his pictures, taking the subjects, such as fairy tales, seriously, and working copiously in the mass media.

Bibliography

• Engen, Rodney K., Walter Crane as a Book Illustrator (1975).
• Spencer, Isobel, Walter Crane (1975).
• Smith, Greg, and Hyde, Sarah, Walter Crane 1845–1915: Artist, Designer, and Socialist (1989).

1845–1915, English designer, illustrator, and painter. As a painter he is grouped with the later Pre-Raphaelites, but he is better known for his illustrations of the works of Spenser and of Hawthorne's Wonder Book and Grimm's Fairy Tales. Seeking with William Morris to ally art with everyday life, he designed textiles, glass windows, tapestries, and house decorations. Crane's interest in socialism is expressed in his cartoons for Commonweal and Justice. In 1888 he founded the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society of London.

Bibliography

See his memoirs, An Artist's Reminiscences (1907); G. Smith, ed., Walter Crane, 1845–1915 (1989).

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