Lot Essay
Persephone, the daughter of Ceres and goddess of Spring, was abducted by Pluto, lord of the underworld, as she and her companions picked flowers in the vale of Enna. At the behest of her mother, Jupiter commanded that she be allowed to return to earth for half the year, thus explaining in mythological terms the rotation of the seasons.
Crane was fascinated by the theme of spring, reinterpreting it in picture after picture from 1871, when he showed A Herald of Spring (Birmingham) at the Dudley Gallery, to 1901, when Sorrow and Spring was exhibited at the Royal Watercolour Society. The Fate of Persephone appeared at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1878 (no.119), when it was much admired by Burne-Jones (see Walter Crane, An Artist's Reminiscences, 1907, p.188). It was exhibited again at the Jubiläums - Kunstausstellung at Karlsruhe in 1902, and bought by the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe; but they sold it in 1923 and it is now untraced. Many of Crane's large allergorical works found homes in Germany, no doubt, as he wrote, because 'the symbolic and figurative character of their subjects (was) more in sympathy with the Teutonic mind'. Another major example, The Bridge of Life (1884), which was acquired by the Berlin collector Ernst Seeger, was sold in these rooms on 30 March 1990 (lot 512) for #242,000, a record price for the artist
The sketch is almost certainly one of two studies for the painting which were included in Crane's one-man exhibition at the Fine Art Society in 1891. There is no evidence that either was sold at the time, but they may well have found purchasers when the unsold items formed the nucleus of a travelling exhibition of Crane's work which toured America, stopped in Montreal, and then went off on a further lap round Europe, finally returning to London in 1896. Indeed it seems that the 'First Sketch for Persephone' was sold at the last American venue, Brooklyn, since it is crossed out in the copy of the catalogue which was adapted for the next showing at Montreal. Professor Anthony Crane, the artist's grandson, has a number of preliminary sketches for the picture which indicate that Crane had difficulty with the principal figures. This is borne out by comparison of our sketch with the finished work (repr. O. von Schleinitz, Walter Crane, 1902, p.15, fig.12), where the pose of Pluto is entirely re-thought, perhaps not altogether for the better. There are also variations in the composition of the horses, the attendant maidens, and the landscape
We are grateful ro Professor Crane, Dr Siegmar Holsten of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, and Mr Peyton Skipwith of the Fine Art Society, for help in preparing this entry
Crane was fascinated by the theme of spring, reinterpreting it in picture after picture from 1871, when he showed A Herald of Spring (Birmingham) at the Dudley Gallery, to 1901, when Sorrow and Spring was exhibited at the Royal Watercolour Society. The Fate of Persephone appeared at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1878 (no.119), when it was much admired by Burne-Jones (see Walter Crane, An Artist's Reminiscences, 1907, p.188). It was exhibited again at the Jubiläums - Kunstausstellung at Karlsruhe in 1902, and bought by the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe; but they sold it in 1923 and it is now untraced. Many of Crane's large allergorical works found homes in Germany, no doubt, as he wrote, because 'the symbolic and figurative character of their subjects (was) more in sympathy with the Teutonic mind'. Another major example, The Bridge of Life (1884), which was acquired by the Berlin collector Ernst Seeger, was sold in these rooms on 30 March 1990 (lot 512) for #242,000, a record price for the artist
The sketch is almost certainly one of two studies for the painting which were included in Crane's one-man exhibition at the Fine Art Society in 1891. There is no evidence that either was sold at the time, but they may well have found purchasers when the unsold items formed the nucleus of a travelling exhibition of Crane's work which toured America, stopped in Montreal, and then went off on a further lap round Europe, finally returning to London in 1896. Indeed it seems that the 'First Sketch for Persephone' was sold at the last American venue, Brooklyn, since it is crossed out in the copy of the catalogue which was adapted for the next showing at Montreal. Professor Anthony Crane, the artist's grandson, has a number of preliminary sketches for the picture which indicate that Crane had difficulty with the principal figures. This is borne out by comparison of our sketch with the finished work (repr. O. von Schleinitz, Walter Crane, 1902, p.15, fig.12), where the pose of Pluto is entirely re-thought, perhaps not altogether for the better. There are also variations in the composition of the horses, the attendant maidens, and the landscape
We are grateful ro Professor Crane, Dr Siegmar Holsten of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, and Mr Peyton Skipwith of the Fine Art Society, for help in preparing this entry