Surname 1

Student’s Name

Professor’s Name

Course

Date

Walter Crane

Major Life Events

Walter Crane was born in Liverpool, England, on 15 August 1845, to Marie Crane and

Thomas Crane, an English artist. On 14 March. 1915, Crane died, leaving behind three

children, Lancelot, Beatrice, and Lionel. Crane's artistic skills developed when he was still

young. Being the son of a well-known and famous artist, Crane secured himself an

apprenticeship, after his family relocated to London, at William James Linton's engraving

shop in 1859. Linton started to present opportunities to Walter Crane, including the one

where Crane provided illustrations for J.R Wise's book, The New Forest: Its history and its

scenery (Pook Press). Walter Crane's apprenticeship ended in 1862. This apprenticeship aided

Crane's career in many ways. Crane obtained a deeper meaning of artistry from this

internship. This skill was evidently significant to Crane later in his career as an artist when he

started to feel like craftsmanship was slowly fading away due to the resources that were being

produced and used up in Victorian England.

Walter Crane published his first books for the children, The House that Jack

built and Dame Trot and Her Comical Cat, in his 20s. Over forty children's books then

followed these books for the rest of Crane's career. Through the apprenticeship, Crane also

comprehended the printing process (Crane 38). This insight gave him a technical advantage

in selecting methods to improve his work with William Linton. In 1962, Crane was asked to

be an illustrator for Edmund Evans for his yellow-backs book series due to his close

association with Linton and his sophisticated drawing expertise. In 1865, Walter Crane
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visited an art galleria based in Piccadilly, where he came across Work, a familiar Fadox

Madox Brown's painting. Though this painting did not have a sudden impact on Crane's style,

it greatly impacted his career in the long term. George Routledge commissioned Walter

Crane in 1865 to create a series of toy books. Other examples of Cranes illustrations

are Loves Altar (1870), Ruth and Boaz (1863), Europe, Asia, Africa (1870), The Lady of

Shallot (1662), The Advent of Spring (1873), The Frog Prince and Other Stories (1874), The

Triumph of Spring (1879) and The Angel of Peace (1900).

Walter Crane was present in the Bloody Sunday events, which took place in the

Trafalgar square in November 1887. These events lead to the demise of three individuals and

the wounding of approximately two hundred people. About a week later, Walter Cranes

acquaintance, Alfred Linnell, was executed in a different demonstration. These simultaneous

occurrences prompted William Morris to write the Death Song, which Crane illustrated

(Simkin). Similar to many communists, Crane strongly believed that the industrialists often

triggered wars primarily for profitable gains other than idealism. Crane stepped down from

the Fabian Society in 1900 since the society had failed to condemn the Boer Wars. From the

1880s to World War 1, Walter Crane's illustrations on social work were visible on the trade

union posters, brochures, membership cards, and banners.

Crane's Importance to Art History

Walter Crane is historically considered one of the most creative creators of the children's

books in the Golden illustration age. Crane was also an art advocate, and he contributed

significantly to the child's nursery motif, which thrived in the final stages of the 19th century

(Clyde). Crane's career had a long-lasting impact on the arts of the labor movements in

Britain. He is recalled for the creation of a variety of iconic imageries linked to the

International Socialist Movement. Crane was the first serving president and a founding

member of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which aimed to stress the creative freedom of the
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individual craftspeople and to endorse the return of hand-craftsmanship (Simkin). The Arts

and Crafts Movement also sought to rebel against the manufactured goods to raise the daily

objects' standards to match fine art. Crane believed in the unanimity of art, and he also

dedicated some of his time to the Art Workers Guild. The objective of the Art Workers Guild

was to promote the unity of both the fine and applied arts.

 Walter Crane had a significant role in bringing art to the everyday life of all classes.

However, Crane did not come up with any new method of creating and making art. Walter

Crane created lots of remarkable artworks in his career. The drawings that he created for The

Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser's poem, are frequently considered his best work. Walter

Crane's images of the children's books transformed the genre in techniques and treatments,

mostly due to his innovative use of color in printing while working with Edmund Evans. For

instance, in the illustration of The Sleeping Beauty in The Wood (1876), Crane further

identifies the sleeping beauty using art by including a peacock -in particular, the feathers-to

symbolize the aesthetic movement (National Galleries Scotland). However, there is no

enough evidence to conclude that Crane's work influenced generations of artists who came

after him.

Mysterious Details about Crane

Crane's work consisted of enigmatic clues, hidden shapes, and pictorial riddles grounded on

the interplay of words in verbal or visual ambiguity. Critics and bibliographers have never

noticed any of the forms, clues, or puzzles. Thus a vital part of cranes' significance -

associated with the link between line and drawing, word and picture – has been lost. Even

though Crane's contemporaries noted his riddles and puns, nothing has been spotted by the

critics. After the interpretation key to Walter Crane's reference was lost, riddles and puns

could no longer be identified from the clutter of the decorative details that were in his

illustrations. Crane also drew other personalized picture books, known as black books, within
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his family. He wrote the books strictly for his children, and he rejected many offers of

publication repeatedly during his timeline (Simkin). These unpublished black books, which

are still unknown up to date, bear witness to Crane's attitude and behavior towards his family,

more so his children.

Why I Selected Crane

I decided to write about Walter Crane because I was fascinated by how committed he was as

a socialist and yet the best of his workings were non-political. He spent so much of his life

advocating for socialism because he was convinced that the liberty in any nation is measured

by the freedom to speak of unpopular beliefs. He anticipated that Marxism would be attained

through schooling rather than rebellion.

Besides his political goals, Crane's understanding of the children's mechanism to

perceptively learn was remarkably intact. I was also inspired by how Crane believed in

images and art's ability to improve the lower class citizens' education and welfare. Crane was

amongst the influential English artists at the end of the 19th century and unquestionably a

great illustrator of all times. Walter Crane's work was extremely significant to children's

education. Mostly, children learn through connecting dots, filling in the blank spaces or gaps,

discovering the odd one out, and figuring out the differences. While doing so, they come

across mathematical or logical problems to be solved later during the learning process. They

learn to query the alphabets' convectional approval and, in general, the duplicity of the

pictures and the symbols. They also learn through the detection of hints and hidden letters,

figures, and words. Crane's illustrations help the children to develop a skeptical yet optimistic

stand towards the world.

Surprising Facts Obtained from The Research

As I did my research, I discovered that in 1907, Walter Crane had published his

autobiography, An Artist's Reminiscences. This book traces his whole life, right from his
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childhood days in Torquay and the difficult conditions surrounding him after his father died

to his prosperous career as a decorative artist and an illustrator. In this book, he describes his

work, politics, and travel, and he also tries to explain why he dedicated so much of his life to

fighting for socialism. It was also evident that Crane's principal interest in analyzing the

children's sensory information mechanisms was sharpened by observing his children. I also

discovered that in all his initial works, Crane used the traditional authorship marks. From

1866, he started using a visual interpretation of the family's name, placed within a symbol of

the Egyptian models. After 1870, Crane's signature became a bit complicated after its first

letter was divided into its two main parts. I also discovered that Walters's grandson, Anthony

Crane, took part in writing The Yale Library Gazette (1957) (Crane 105), where he discussed

Walter Crane.
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Works Cited

"Walter Crane." National Galleries of Scotland, www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-

artists/artists/walter-crane. Accessed on 16 November 2020.

"Walter Crane: A biography of the Illustrator." Pook Press, 3 January 2018,

www.pookpress.co.uk/project/walter-crane-biography-2. Accessed on 16

November 2020.

Clyde, Jacqueline. "Walter Crane." Widewalls, 14 June 2016,

https://www.widewalls.ch/artists/walter-crane. Accessed on 16 November 2020.

Crane, Anthony. "My Grandfather, Walter Crane." The Yale University Library Gazette,

1957, pp. 97-109.

Crane, W. Line & Form. Franklin Classics Trade Press, 2018.

Simkin, John. "Walter Crane." Spartacus Educational, January 2020, https://spartacus-

educational.com/Jcrane.htm. Accessed on 16 November 2020.