134

  • Flora's Feast: A Masque of Flowers

  • 1889
  • Walter Crane (British 1845-1915)
  • Printed book, Page 38
  • 25.7 x 19.0 x 1.4 cm., 10-1/8 x 17-3/8 x 5/8"
  • Catherine Carter Goebel, Paul A. Anderson Chair in the Arts Purchase, Paul A. Anderson Art History Collection, Augustana College 2010.26

Essay by Virginia Johnson, Professor Emerita, Reading and Writing Center

These brilliant orange lilies, tigers literally bursting from their bells, appear as the thirty-eighth of forty colored lithographs which illustrate a pageant of personified flowers called from winter's sleep by their Queen Flora. The procession follows the seasons; early spring flowers like crocuses and daffodils lead while autumn blooms such as tiger-lilies and chrysanthemums conclude. Walter Crane, one of the most prolific illustrators of the late 19th century, composed a couplet for each flower and handwrote it in Gothic characters over its illustration. Lettering and illustration become a coherent design as each text includes initial letters illuminated with aspects of the illustration below. In "Tiger-lilies" the organic curves in the three upper-case letters mimic the curves of lily petals and tiger tongues, and a tiny tiger's head pops from a flower bell in the initial "T."

Crane's life was filled with art and literature from many periods and places. Born in 1845, the second son of a portrait painter, in 1859 he was apprenticed to an influential engraver, William James Linton, who introduced Crane to Pre-Raphaelites and their fascination with nature and medieval culture. He learned to understand illustration and decoration by closely studying such eclectic sources as illuminated medieval manuscripts, Japanese block prints, Persian rugs, Renaissance emblems, Greek architecture, and European cathedrals. Crane often mixed styles within the same book or even within the same illustration. In Flora's Feast, characters in the procession wear floral versions of various fashions including classic Grecian drapery, medieval armor, or intricately embroidered Renaissance gowns.

Like other pages of Flora's Feast, "Tiger-lilies" includes large amounts of white space while text and illustration are unbound by borders. These are unlike illustrations in most of Crane's books where text appears in boxes or scrolls, and thick, often decorated borders crowd primary characters. Like other Flora's Feast illustrations, "Tiger-lilies" exhibits Crane's commitment to strong, repeating lines and graduated color as well as Crane's whimsy seen in the tigers' stamen-like tongues. Still, "Tiger-lilies" is unique. Only domesticated animals appear on other pages. In contrast, here exotic tigers spring dynamically like heraldic creatures rampant with claws raised. Here also unlike the rest, the human figure is minimal; only a quarter of her rather languorous body shows. In this illustration, more than any other, the power of the floral tangle nearly overshadows the human form.