La Primavera, 1883. Oil on canvas, 15 x 36 inches (38 x 91.5 cm). Private collection.
This picture was painted during Crane's stay in Rome in the spring of 1883 and exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in 1886. The theme of Spring was one that obviously obsessed Crane because he returned to it time and time again. In 1872, during his extended three year honeymoon in Rome, Crane recalled his first experience of a Spring in Rome writing: “The beauty of the Italian spring was upon us” (1389). He exhibited A Herald of Spring in 1871, the Advent of Spring in 1873, The Earth and Spring in 1875, Winter and Spring in 1876, The Fate of Persephone in 1878, and finally Sorrow and Spring in 1901.
Of these works La Primavera is the one that most epitomized the Etruscan style in both subject matter and format with its long horizontal dimensions, high skyline, and the outlines of a distant mountain range placed across the width of the composition. When Crane revisited Rome in 1883 it obviously revived the Etruscan influences on his art, particularly as he renewed acquaintance with both Giovanni Costa and M. R. Corbet at this time. Crane and Corbet had studios close to one another in the Via Sistina. The Spring flowers dotting the landscape in the foreground, in this case daffodils, and the female figure picking flowers is reminiscent of his friend Edward Burne-Jones’s March Marigolds of c.1870. Crane’s painting prefigures the compositions later seen in J. W. Waterhouse’s Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May of c. 1911 and Narcissus of 1912.
Bibliography
Crane, Walter: An Artist's Reminiscences. London: Methuen, 1907.
Last modified 19 December 2022