McGill Library
McLennan Library Building3459 rue McTavish
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 0C9
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Walter Crane Sketchbook Collection
The collection consists of six of Walter Crane’s sketchbooks. Two of the sketchbooks date to the summer of 1864, and the remaining four date to the summers of 1897, 1901, 1903, and 1905. The collection’s dates offer a contrast between Crane’s early and later career as an artist. The contents feature his preliminary designs, pictorial observations of the world, and textual notes.
Crane’s sketchbooks are filled with landscapes and towns and building interiors and exteriors from Crane’s life in England and travels to Ireland. Aligned with Crane’s commissioned and published works, the sketchbooks include sketches for his book designs, a heraldic eagle, and plans for a panel painting or frieze. Flora, fauna, men, women, children, Greco-Roman figures and architectural details make up the wide range of subjects covered in the sketchbooks.
The drawings range from Crane’s rough ideas expressed in his preliminary sketches and line drawings to tonal drawings and studies of individuals, landscapes, and flowers. The drawing techniques play with perspective, topography, bodily gesture, facial expression, tone, line, outline, form, and colour.
Crane’s notations appear throughout the sketchbooks, including on the sketches themselves and on their facing pages. He also hand-wrote inspirational excerpts from poems and essays which includes quotes from Charles Kingsley and John Ruskin works.
Between blank and torn pages, the medium for the textual and visual content shifts between pen and pencil on paper. Several landscapes are full-page watercolours on paper.
Crane, Walter, 1845-1915
A New City: A Study of Urban Development in an Area Including Newbury, Swindon and Didcot
Llewelyn-Davies, Weeks, and Partners, London
A Review of Yorkshire and Humberside
Yorkshire and Humberside Economic Planning Council
Northampton, Bedford and North Bucks Study: An Assessment of Inter-Related Growth
Great Britain. Ministry of Housing and Local Government
New Schools. The Book of the Exhibition by the Royal Institute of British Architects
Royal Institute of British Architects.
Great Britain. Department of the Environment.
Fifth Report of the National Parks Commission
Great Britain. National Parks Commission.
Journal of the Commons, Open Spaces and Footpaths Preservation Society
Commons, Open Spaces and Footpaths Preservation Society.
Drawings for pp. 52-54 of the Brownies Around the world
Part of Palmer Cox Collection
Item consists of drawings for pp. 52-54 of the Brownies Around the world, showing the Brownies in England