Bibliography relating to Eyre Crowe A.R.A.

Original sources

My interest in Eyre Crowe was sparked in 1993, when I was working in the Department of Archives and Manuscripts at the University of Wales, Bangor. A collection of title deeds, financial papers, correspondence and ephemera relating to the Wynne family of Garthewin, Denbighshire (the Garthewin Additional Collection), was donated by the owner, and catalogued by me and my colleagues. Amongst the mass of papers were 15 detailed diaries kept by Eyre Crowe, together with some letters, accounts and other person papers. They had been preserved at Garthewin by Robert O.F. Wynne, Crowe’s great-nephew.

The Garthewin papers were the starting point for my research. Other major manuscript collections consulted were the following:

Crowe family papers at the National Art Library, Victoria & Albert Museum (MSL/2001/4)
Original manuscript of Sir Joseph Archer Crowe’s Reminiscences of thirty-five years of my life, British Library (MS.44059)
Papers of Sir Eyre Crowe at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (MS Eng. d.2907-10)
Archives of the Royal Academy of Arts, London
Papers of Henry Wallis at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford (MS Eng. c.7040)

Printed sources relating to Crowe's life

Crowe's obituary appeared in The Times on 13 December 1910.

A brief biography of Crowe appeared in the Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, originally published in 1912. An expanded, updated, more accurate, and highly recommended version appears in the newly-published Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford University Press, 2004), which is also available on-line by subscription at http://www.oxforddnb.com/

Other useful works are as follows:

Crowe, Eyre. With Thackeray in America (London : Cassell & Co., 1893)
Crowe, Eyre. Thackeray’s Haunts and Homes (London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1897)
Crowe, Sibyl and Corp, Edward. Our Ablest Public Servant – Sir Eyre Crowe G.C.B., G.C.M.G., K.C.B., K.C.M.G., 1864-1925. (Braunton, Devon : Merlin Books Ltd, 1993)
Crowe, Sir Joseph Archer. Reminiscences of thirty-five years of my life (London : John Murray, 2^nd edition, 1895)
Harden, Edgar F. (ed). The Letters and Private Papers of W.M. Thackeray (New York and London : Garland Publishing Inc., 2 vols, 1994)
Leslie, George Dunlop R.A. The Inner Life of the Royal Academy, with an account of its schools and exhibitions principally in the reign of Queen Victoria (London : John Murray, 1914)
Maas, Jeremy. The Victorian Art World in Photographs (London : Barrie and Jenkins, 1984)
Marks, Henry Stacy. Pen and Pencil Sketches (London : Chatto & Windus, 1894, 2 vols)
Ray, Gordon N. (ed). The Letters and Private Papers of W.M. Thackeray (Oxford University Press, 4 vols, 1945-6)

Printed sources and criticism relating to Crowe's paintings

‘British Artists: their Style and Character – no. LXXIII – Eyre Crowe’, Art Journal, June 1864, 205-207
Ash, Russell. ‘English Paintings of 1874’, The Connoisseur, no. 743, Jan 1974, 32-40
Chester, Austin. ‘The Art of Mr. Eyre Crowe A.R.A.’, The Windsor Magazine, October 1907, 490-506
Johnson, E.D.H. ‘Victorian Artists and the Urban Milieu’, The Victorian City: Images and Reality, ed. H.J. Dyos and Michael Wolff (London and Boston : Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973)
Lambourne, Lionel. Victorian Painting (London : Phaidon Press Ltd, 1999)
Morris, Edward. Victorian and Edwardian Paintings in the Walker Art Gallery and at Sudley House (National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside/HMSO, 1996)
Maas, Jeremy. Victorian Painters (London : Barrie & Rockliff, The Cresset Press, 1969)
Nunn, Pamela Gerrish. Problem Pictures: Women and Men in Victorian painting (Aldershot : Scholar Press, 1975)
Ormond, R. National Portrait Gallery: Early Victorian Portraits (HMSO, 1973)
Reynolds, Graham. Painters of the Victorian Scene (London : B T Batsford Ltd, 1953)
Reynolds, Graham. Victorian Painting (Studio Vista Ltd, 1966)
Treuherz, Julian. Hard Times: Social Realism in Victorian Art (London : Lund Humphries in association with Manchester City Art Galleries, 1987)
Wood, Christopher. Victorian Panorama – Paintings of Victorian Life (London : Faber & Faber Ltd, 1976)

Crowe's slavery paintings:

Hills, Patricia. The Painters’ America, Rural and Urban Life, 1810-1910 (Praegar Publications in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1974)
Johns, Elizabeth. American Genre Painting: the Politics of Everyday Life (Yale University Press, 1991)
Lubin, David M. Picturing a Nation : art and social change in 19^th century America (Yale University Press, 1994)
McElroy, Guy C. Facing History – The Black Image in American Art 1710-1940 (Bedford Arts, Publishers, in association with the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1990); and a review of this exhibition by Robert Hughes in Time magazine, 29 Jan 1990, p.51
Marsh, Jan (ed.), Black Victorians: Black People in British Art, 1800-1900 (Lund Humphries, in association with Manchester Art Gallery, 2005)

Reference works

The outline of Crowe's career as a painter can be traced through the following standard art dictionaries:

Bénézit, E. Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs (Librarie Grund, 1966)
Graves, Algernon. A Century of Loan Exhibitions, 1813-1912 (Bath: Kingsmead Reprints, 1970)
Checklist of British Artists in the Witt Library (Courtauld Institute of Art, 1991)
Clement, Clara Erskine and Hutton, Laurence. Artists of the Nineteenth Century (Boston and New York, 1879, revised 1884)
Graves, Algernon. A Dictionary of Artists 1760-1893
Graves, Algernon. Art Sales from early in the eighteenth century to early in the twentieth century (Bath : Kingsmead Reprints, 1973)
Graves, Algernon. The Royal Academy of Art, Exhibitors 1769 to 1904 (Bath : S R Publishers Ltd and Kingsmead Reprints, 1970)
Graves, Algernon. Royal Academy Exhibitors 1905-1970 (E P Publishing Ltd, 1977)
Graves, Algernon. The British Institution 1806-1867 – a complete dictionary of contributors and their work from the foundation of the Institution (1875; facsimile edition by Kingsmead Reprints, Bath, 1969)
Lewis, Frank. A Dictionary of British Historical Painters (F. Lewis Publishers Ltd, 1979)
Johnson, J., and Greutzner, A. British Artists 1880-1940 (Antique Collectors Club, 1976)
Norman, Geraldine. 19^th Century Painters and Painting: a Dictionary (Thames and Hudson, 1977
Sanders, Lloyd C. (ed). Celebrities of the Century, being a Dictionary of Men and Women of the Nineteenth Century (Cassell & Co. Ltd, no publication date)
Waters, Grant M. Dictionary of British artists working 1900-1950 (Eastbourne Fine Art, 1974)
Wood, Christopher. The Dictionary of Victorian Painters (Woodbridge, Suffolk : Antique Collectors Club, 2^nd ed., 1978)

Apart from the standard art dictionaries and reference works mentioned above, the following additional documents and websites have been useful in drawing up the tables of Crowe's artworks:

Catalogue of Household Furniture, Oil Paintings, Sketches and Drawings etc., sold by Messrs Furber at 77 Chancery Lane, London, on 22 Feb 1911 (Garthewin Additional Collection, 1589; held at the University of Wales, Bangor Archives)
Sale catalogue of the remaining works of the late Eyre Crowe A.R.A., fragment, undated, c.1911 (Garthewin Additional Collection, 1591)
Diaries of Eyre Crowe A.R.A. (Garthewin Additional, 1554-1570)
Artcyclopedia, the Fine Art search engine: www.artcyclopedia.com
Art Price, database of sales of paintings in major auction houses: www.artprice.com
Sketches and engravings are occasionally offered for sale on Ebay.com and Ebay.co.uk
Reviews of exhibitions in publications such as The Times, the Athenaeum, the Art Journal, and the Illustrated London News; and reproductions of Royal Academy exhibits from 1888 onwards in Royal Academy Pictures

Select bibliography of general works on the Victorian art world

Gillett, Paula. The Victorian Painter’s World (Gloucester : Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd, 1990)
Hacking, Juliet. Princes of Victorian Bohemia : photographs by David Wilkie Wynfield (London : Prestel/National Portrait Gallery, 2000)
Hermann, Luke. Nineteenth century British painting (London : Gilles de la Mare Publishers Ltd, 2000)
Hutchinson, Sidney C. The History of the Royal Academy 1768-1968 (New York : Taplinger Publishing Co., 1968)
Lambourne, Lionel. Victorian Painting (London : Phaidon Press Ltd, 1999)
Leslie, George Dunlop R.A. The Inner Life of the Royal Academy, with an account of its schools and exhibitions principally in the reign of Queen Victoria (London : John Murray, 1914)
Maas, Jeremy. The Victorian Art World in Photographs (London : Barrie and Jenkins, 1984)
Maas, Jeremy. Victorian Painters (London : Barrie & Rockliff, The Cresset Press, 1969)
Morris, Edward and Milner, Frank. ‘And when did you last see your father?’ – Catalogue to accompany an exhibition about the painting by W F Yeames, its background and fame, the St John’s Wood Clique and 19^th century paintings of the English Civil Wars (National Museum and Galleries on Merseyside, 1992)
Reynolds, Graham. Victorian Painting (Studio Vista Ltd, 1966)
Sandby, William. The History of the Royal Academy of Arts (London : Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 2 vols, 1862)
Sitwell, Sacheverell. Narrative Pictures – a survey of English genre and its painters (London : B T Batsford Ltd, 1936, reprinted 1969)
Stephens, Frederic George (ed). Artists at Home, Photographed by J.P. Mayall and reproduced in facsimile (London : Sampson, Low & Co., 1884)
Strong, Roy. ‘And when did you last see your father?’ – The Victorian painter and British history (Thames & Hudson, 1978)
Thomas, Julia. Victorian Narrative Painting (London : Tate Publishing, 2000)
Treuherz, Julian. Victorian Painting (Thames & Hudson, 1993)
Warner, Malcolm. The Victorians: British Painting, 1837-1901 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1997)
Wood, Christopher. Victorian Panorama – Paintings of Victorian Life (London : Faber & Faber Ltd, 1976)

Web links

The internet has transformed research over the past 10 years. Links to images of Crowe's works on museum and gallery websites are available on the Pictures in Galleries page on this site.

The following are general sites relating to Victorian art and institutions: