Crane, Walter

Crane, Walter (1845–1915). British illustrator, designer, painter, writer, and administrator. He was the son of a miniaturist and trained as a wood engraver. His career was very varied, but he is best remembered today as an illustrator of children's books, a field in which he was prolific throughout his life. He took this work very seriously, believing that ‘We all remember the little cuts that coloured the books of our childhood. The ineffaceable quality of these early pictorial and literary impressions affords the strongest plea for good art in the nursery and the schoolroom.’ Originally he worked in black-and-white, but he adapted well to the photomechanical colour processes that came in at the end of the 19th century and was one of the pioneers of the full-colour picture book for children. He was also one of the first illustrators to treat a double-page spread as a visual unity. His work for adults included designing wallpaper, and he was a leading figure in the Arts and Crafts movement that tried to rehabilitate good design and craftsmanship. Like William Morris (1834–96), the leading figure of this movement, Crane was a Socialist, and he illustrated A. A. Watts's The Child's Socialist Reader (1907). He was greatly interested in art education, serving on various examination boards; in the 1890s he taught in Manchester and Reading, and in 1898–9 he was principal of the Royal College of Art. His writings included three primers that were much used by students: The Basis of Design (1898), Line and Form (1900), and Of the Decorative Illustration of Books (1896). Crane said that he enjoyed illustrating children's books because ‘in a sober and matter-of-fact age’ they afforded an ‘outlet for unrestrained flights of fancy'. He evidently carried the fairy-tale world he depicted into his own domestic life, for his wife once received astonished guests ‘dressed as a sort of sunflower'.