CRANE, Walter (1845-1915). Original watercolor drawing illustrating nine nursery rhymes, [London, apparently a commission for the printer Edmund Evans, c.1865].

Very fine and quintessential early drawing by Walter Crane, composed in homage to medieval scribes and illumination. Crane's biographer wrote of some other early drawings by Crane, "each of these has a picture and one or two verses framed in a floral border ... a pattern established in the elaborately chromolithographed ‘illuminated’ gift books designed by Owen Jones [and] medieval calendar pictures ... the wood engraver William James Linton was so impressed by the overall concept of design... that he agreed to take the young draughtsman on as an apprentice without the usual premium” (Spencer, Walter Crane, 1975, p.15). Crane has selected quatrains from eight much-loved nursery rhymes and mentions and illustrates a ninth (Goosey Goosey Gander). The calligraphed text is pasted in between illustrations of figures, animals and leafy borders. It was probably executed for a children's magazine or book and shows some evidence of printing preparation, but the publication has not been identified. Provenance: Edmund Evans, 1826-1905, wood-engraver and color printer (his archives sold, Sotheby's, 9 July 1976, lot 573 [part lot]).

Published: One Hundred Books Famous in Children's Literature. New York: The Grolier Club, 2015, color frontispiece.

Watercolor, pen and ink, touchces of gouaches, over pencil, on paper, 244 x 175mm sheet size, with poems calligraphed in red and black ink on slips and pasted onto the sheet (slight rubbing along old folds and near the cow in the corn). Flout-mounted, double-matted and framed.