Walter Crane in Greece: antiquity through socialist eyes

Abstract

The illustrator, graphic designer, and children's book illustrator Walter Crane traveled in 1888 to Greece, where he filled a sketchbook with views of Greek architecture and figures in local dress. This paper places those drawings in context with the artist's representations of other classically garbed figures and argues that the images participate in the rhetoric of imperialistic vision of other cultures, as often seen in travel literature and illustrations. However, Crane was a noted socialist and member of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and he viewed ancient Greece and its architecture as a model for the ideal socialist society. Therefore, his drawings of Greek landscape and Greek-style figures also serve to reference his anti-imperial, socialist political convictions as an attempt to disengage from modernity and its capitalist orientation in order to imagine a different world.