CRANE, WALTER (1845-1915), English artist, second son of Thomas Crane (1808-1859), portrait painter and miniaturist, was born in Liverpool on Aug. 15, 1845. The family soon removed to Torquay (where the boy gained his early artistic impressions), and, when he was 12 years old, to London. He early came under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites, and was a diligent student of Ruskin. He was apprenticed for three years (1859-1862) to William James Linton, the wood-engraver. As a wood-engraver he had abundant opportunity for the minute study of the con temporary artists whose work passed through his hands, of Ros setti, Millais, Tenniel and F. Sandys, and of the masters of the Italian Renaissance; he was also greatly influenced by the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum. A further and important element in the development of his talent, was the study of Japanese colour prints, the methods of which he imitated in a series of toy-books, which started a new fashion. In 1862 his picture, "The Lady of Shalott," was exhibited at the Royal Academy, but the Academy steadily refused his maturer work; and after the opening of the Grosvenor gallery in 1877 he ceased to send pictures to Burlington house. In 1864 he began to illustrate for Mr. Edmund Evans, the colour printer, a series of sixpenny toy-books of nursery rhymes, displaying admirable fancy and beauty of design, though he was limited to the use of three colours. He was allowed more freedom in a delightful series begun in 1873 The Frog Prince, etc., which showed markedly the influence of Japanese art, and of a long visit to Italy following on his marriage in 1871. The Baby's Opera was a book of English nursery songs planned in 1877 with Mr. Evans, and a third series of children's books with the collective title A Romance of the Three R's, provided a regular course of instruc tion in art for the nursery. In his Lady of Shalott the artist had shown his preoccupation with unity of design in book illustration by printing the words of the poem himself, as he considered that this union of the calligrapher's and the decorator's art was one secret of the beauty of the old illuminated books. He followed the same course in The First of May: A Fairy Masque by John R. Wise, text and decoration being in this case reproduced by photo gravure. The "Goose Girl" illustration taken from his Household Stories from Grimm (188 2) was reproduced in tapestry by William Morris, and is now in the South Kensington museum. Flora's Feast: A Masque of Flowers had lithographic reproduc tions of Crane's line drawings washed in with water-colour; he also decorated in colour The Wonder Book of Nathaniel Haw thorne, and Margaret Deland's Old Garden; in 1894 he collabo rated with William Morris in the page decoration of The Story of the Glittering Plain, published at the Kelmscott press, which was executed in the style of 16th century Italian and German wood cuts; but in purely decorative interest the finest of his works in book illustration is Spenser's Faerie Queene (1894-96) and the Shepheard's Calendar. The poems which form the text of Queen Summer (1891), Renascence (1891), and The Sirens Three (1886) are by the artist himself.
In the early '8os under Morris's influence he was closely asso ciated with the socialist movement. He did as much as Morris himself to bring art into the daily life of all classes. With this object in view he devoted much attention to designs for textile stuffs, for wallpapers, and to house decoration; but he also used his art for the direct advancement of the socialist cause. For a long time he provided the weekly cartoons for the socialist organs Justice and The Commonweal. Many of these were collected as Cartoons for the Cause (1896) . He devoted much time and energy to the work of the Art Workers' Guild, and to the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, founded by him 1888.
A portrait of Walter Crane by G. F. Watts is in the National Portrait Gallery. There is a comprehensive and sumptuously illus trated book on The Art of Walter Crane (1902) by P. G. Konody; a monograph (1902) by Otto von Schleinitz in the Kunstler Mono graphien series (Bielefeld and Leipzig) ; and an account of himself An Artist's Reminiscences (19o1) .