CROWE, SIR JOSEPH ARCHER English consular official and art critic, son of Eyre Crowe, was born in London on Oct. 25, 1825. He studied painting under Delaroche in Paris, where his father was correspondent of the Morning Chronicle. During the Crimean War he was the correspondent of the Illustrated London News, and during the Austro-Italian War represented The Times in Vienna. He was British consul general in Leipzig from 186o to 1872, and in Dusseldorf from 1872 to 188o, when he was appointed commercial attaché in Berlin, being transferred to Paris in 1882. In 1883 he was secretary to the Danube conference in London; in 1889 plenipotentiary at the Samoa conference in Berlin; and in 18go British envoy at the Telegraph congress in Paris, in which year he was made K.C.M.G. During a sojourn in Italy, 1846-47, he cemented a lifelong friend ship with the Italian critic Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle (182o 97), and together they produced several historical works on art of classic importance, notably Early Flemish Painters (London, 1857) ; A New History of Painting in Italy from the Second to the Sixteenth Century (London, 1864-7i, 5 vols.). In 1895 Crowe published Reminiscences of Thirty-Five Years of My Life. He died at Schloss Gamburg in Bavaria on Sept. 6, 18g6.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle's great History of Painting was under revision by Crowe up to the time of his death, and subsequently by S. A. Strong (d. 1904) and Langton Douglas. A reprint of the original edition, with annotations by Edward Huttons, was pub lished in 1909.