ABSTRACT
Lucy Crane was an English writer, art critic, musician, and translator, who like many women from a similar background maintained herself by working as a teacher and governess. She wrote children’s stories and nursery rhymes, and lectured in England on fine art. While she thought that John Ruskin was despondent about the future of art and design, she saw Morris as being ever hopeful of change. The Magazine of Art gave faint praise in its review: ‘Her precept on such matters as form and colour, and her example on such homely affairs as the decoration of the fire-place, are unexceptional and though she is a little weak and uncertain when speaking of Michelangelo and Raphael, in the main her hints are good and her opinion safe’. By beginning with some colour having natural fitness to recommend it, and using one or two of its modifying tints taken separately, by the union of the whole we get a harmony of analogy.
