Walter Crane : his work and influence

Walter Crane's education was supervised by governesses and by his father, the artist Thomas Crane, who encouraged him to develop his artistic talents. In 1857, when he was twelve years of age, the family moved from Torquay to I.ondon, where he had his first opportunity to visit museums and the Royal Academy. A year later he completed a set of coloured illustrations to The lady of Shalott, which was shown to Ruskin and to the wood engraver, W.J. Linton, who agreed to take Walter on as an apprentice draughtsman on wood. In Linton's workshop Crane studied the black and white work of the day. Illustrations were in great demand for the new journals that were to become such a feature of publishing in the Sixties and Crane had little difficulty in finding work. Much of it was inconsequential despite a promising beginning with the commission to illustrate J.R. Wise's The New Forest in 1862. Attempts to become a regular contibutor to Once a Week and Punch had little success because he was ill at ease with modern life subjects. He began to concentrate on work for the children's book market and by the end of the decade had evolved a confident black and white graphic style. This was influenced by cuts from drawings by D.G. Rossetti, Millais, F. Leighton, Charles Keene and F. Sandys whose interest in medieval art encouraged a frank approach to wood engraving; and also by his own experience in colour work which likewise encouraged economy of line