- Also known as
-
Walter Crane
-
primary name: Crane, Walter
- Details
- individual; painter/draughtsman; designer; printmaker; British; Male
- Life dates
- 1845-1915
- Biography
- Painter, draughtsman on wood, illustrator, decorator and writer, and leading figure in the Arts and Crafts movement; apprenticed to the wood-engraver William James Linton (q.v.) 1859-61. In 1871-3 he was in Italy, where he made a number of very beautiful, often rather dark-toned landscape drawings, using a combination of watercolour and bodycolour. His famous toy books for children were produced 1865-76.
There is a huge archive in the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, of c.5,000 works, currently being catalogued; this will be available on-line in 2008.
Crane's first ceramic designs were made for Wedgwood cream-ware between 1867 and 1871. He then designed tiles for Maw & Company, together with his friend, Lewis F. Day, from the mid 1870s.
Crane's designs for Pilkington's were made at the end of his career, first in 1900, when he designed a series of tiles and then between 1904 and 1906, when he made a few designs for pottery
- Bibliography
- Spencer, I, 'Walter Crane', London 1975
Manchester 1989, Whitworth Art Gallery, 'Walter Crane 1845-1915 Artist, Designer and Socialist', exhibition catalogue.
'The Work of Walter Crane', Art Journal Easter Annual 1898
Gere 1994
