Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Crane, Walter
CRANE, WALTER (1845-1915), artist, the second son of Thomas Crane, of Chester, portrait painter, by his wife, Marie Kearsley, was born in Liverpool 15 August 1845. Two months later his parents moved to Torquay where, in due course, he attended a private school until, in 1857, they went to London. In 1859 Crane was apprenticed for three years to William James Linton [q.v.], the wood engraver, though he studied painting at the same time. In 1862 picture by him, ‘The Lady of Shalott’, was accepted by the Royal Academy, but it was not until the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877 that he was able freely to exhibit his work in oils. The opportunities for the water-colourist were less restricted, and he made the most of these, becoming an associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1888.
Meanwhile, in book decoration, Crane was by no means content to confine himself to reproducing the work of others. In 1863 his first illustrated book, The New Forest, appeared; a set of designs for The Lady of Shalott gained the approval of Linton; and an introduction to the engraver, Edmund Evans [q.v.], led to the publication of a number of picture books, chiefly for children, engraved and printed in colours by Evans from the drawings of Crane; a first series began in 1864 and was followed by a second in 1873. Other works of the same nature were The Fairy Ship (1869), The Baby’s Opera (1877), The Baby’s Bouquet (1879), A Romance of the Three R’s (1885-1886), The Baby’s own Æsop (1887), Flora’s Feast, a Masque of Flowers (1888), three poems of his own, The Sirens Three (1886), Queen Summer and Renascence (1891), and an edition of Spenser’s Faerie Queene in twelve parts (1894-1896).
In all of these Crane revealed a remarkable talent for designing beautiful accessories, and before long he began to direct this to practical ends. To record the various purposes to which he applied it would be to make a list of wellnigh every article of household decoration. It soon became apparent, however, that progress in this direction was seriously hampered by the difficulty of placing work before the public. In the endeavour to overcome this obstacle the Art Workers’ Guild was established in 1884; and Crane, who had taken the principal part in its promotion, was elected first president. Subsequently he served for two periods (1888-1890 and 1895-1915) as president of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, which at the New Gallery in 1888 first showed the full importance of the movement. Another development in that year was the meeting at Liverpool of the Art Congress Association; but at its second meeting held at Glasgow in 1889 William Morris and Crane so upset the harmony of the proceedings by their insistence upon their socialistic doctrines that the congress never met again. Some five or six years before Crane had been swept, by the enthusiasm of Morris, into the Socialist League which the latter had founded, financed, and provided with head-quarters in his house at Hammersmith. Crane was not highly effective as an orator; but when his subject lent itself to illustration on the blackboard he delighted his audiences with his facility, and it was chiefly with his pencil that he assisted such progress as was made. He designed a banner which was embroidered by Miss May Morris, and he contributed to the weekly periodicals Commonweal and Justice a long series of cartoons, many of which were subsequently republished in a volume entitled Cartoons for the Cause (1896).
In 1891 Crane exhibited at the Fine Art Society’s gallery a collection of his varied artistic works, which he afterwards took to the United States, and in 1892 to Germany, Austria, and Scandinavia. His position in decorative art was recognized by his appointment in 1893 as director of design at the Manchester Municipal School of Art; in 1896 he became art director of Reading College; and in 1898 principal of the Royal College of Art, South Kensington. He published in the last-mentioned year The Bases of Design; this was followed by Line and Form in 1900, in which year he took a collection of his works to Budapest. In 1903 he arranged a display of British arts and crafts at Turin, and in acknowledgement he was awarded the order of the Royal Crown of Italy; in 1911 he received the order of SS. Maurizio and Lazzaro. In addition to many foreign medals, he received in July 1905 the gold medal of the Society of Arts of London, and in 1912 he painted a portrait of himself at the request of the authorities of the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
Although the painting of pictures was the least significant of his activities Crane by no means neglected it. He was indefatigable in the production of landscapes, chiefly in water-colours, and he also painted a number of more ambitious works in oil. ‘The Renaissance of Venus’ (1877) is notable as having been purchased by G. F. Watts, by whose desire it was subsequently (1913) presented to the nation. In 1881 (Sir) Edward Burne-Jones selected Crane to complete a series, ‘Cupid and Psyche’, begun by himself, for the house of Mr. George Howard (afterwards ninth Earl of Carlisle) in Palace Green, Kensington. Other important canvases by Crane are ‘The Bridge of Life’ (1884), ‘The Mower’ (1891), and ‘Neptune’s Horses’ (1898). A tapestry panel, ‘The Goose Girl’, woven by Morris from one of the illustrations in Crane’s Household Stories from Grimm (1882) is in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Crane married in 1871 Mary Frances, daughter of Thomas Andrews, of Winchlow Hall, Hempstead, Essex, and had two sons and one daughter. He died at Horsham 14 March 1915.
G. F. Watts’s portrait of Walter Crane, painted in 1891, is in the National Portrait Gallery.
[P. G. Konody, The Art of Walter Crane, 1902; Otto von Schlienitz, in the Künstler Monographien series, 1902; Art Journal, Easter number, 1898; J. Bruce Glasier, William Morris and Early Days of the Socialist Movement, 1921; private information.]