"Such Sights as Youthful Poets Dream On Summer Eves by Haunted Stream", by Walter Crane, RWS (1845-1915). 1868. Watercolour and Gouache on paper. 10 ¾ x 29 ¾ inches (27.5 x 75.5 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy of Sotheby's. [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Crane exhibited this watercolour at fifth Exhibition of Water Colour Drawings at the Dudley Gallery in 1869, no. 24. This gallery was the showcase for the early Aesthetic Movement and particularly a group of young painters referred to as the Poetry Without Grammar School." The term "poetry without grammar" was first coined by a reviewer for The Westminster Review in 1869 and the critic pointed out this work by Crane as a typical example:
These are examples of a school in which the separability of the two parts of artistic culture, the knowledge of its grammatical elements and the susceptibility to its emotional charms, is most convincingly displayed; a school which produces pictures delightful for sentiment, but ridiculous for drawing; a school so incomplete, and, if appearances may be trusted, so contented with its incompleteness, that there really does not seem much to hope for from it in future. A picture needs to be drawn just as much as a poem needs to rhyme and scan; and it seems to us just as undesirable to exhibit these undrawn and formless suggestions of pictures as it would be to print the promising but puerile efforts of a poet of twelve. This we feel bound to put strongly, because our own want of grammatical training in art, our own keen enjoyment of the fancy, the sentiment, the sense of colour, of landscape, of poetry, shown in these works, would naturally render us lenient to their particular shortcomings. But it cannot be too much urged that if this school is ever to make any mark, it must cease to be a poetry-without-grammar school; such works as it produces at present must be regarded as mere fancies, hints, sketches, possibilities of pictures, by the suppression of which, until a foundation of fact and accuracy comes to sustain the superstructure of sentiment and beauty, the public would lose little, and the artists probably gain much. [594]
Left: The vision of the procession of figures inspired by the youth's reading. Right: The youth holding his illuminated book.
This work by Crane does indeed epitomize the Poetry Without Grammar School in the beauty of its colouring and fanciful composition, but also in its extremely poor draughtsmanship and bodily proportions as displayed in the figure of the reclining poet. The picture features a youthful poet clad in a red robe lying by the bank of a winding stream, an illuminated manuscript held in his left hand. He looks away from the manuscript he has been reading to gaze at a mythical procession of classical figures across the stream as if in a dream state. His lute lies by his side. A forest and a stretch of rolling hills fill the background. Its title Such Sights as Youthful Poets Dream On Summer Eves by Haunted Stream is taken from John Milton's poem "L'Allegro."
Contemporary Reviews of the Painting
The critic of The Art Journal found the picture poetic but strange:
Neither must we forget to mention a poetic though peculiar composition by Walter Crane, as a favourable, but not too ultra example of the abnormal styles which find local habitation in the Dudley. A poet, stretched to ungainly length beside a tranquil river, falls into reverie, and sees a vision of horsemen with phantom reflections in the silvery stream; thus the picture gives pretty rendering to the lines -
On summer eves, by haunted stream" (81).A reviewer for The Westminster Review recognized the inherent beauty of the work, particularly the landscape: "Mr. Crane's 'Poet' is a youth in crimson velvet, lying on the ground - and on nearly a rood of it, so tall is he - and looking across the river at a procession of men and horses, which seems to have come straight from a Greek bas-relief for his benefit. Behind are meadows and low hills dark in the twilight, from among which the river winds toward us - an undeniably lovely landscape" (594).
Bibliography
"Contemporary Literature: Art." The Westminster Review New Series XXXV (April 1869): 594-96.
"Dudley Gallery." The Art Journal New Series VIII (1 March 1869): 81-82.
Nineteenth Century European Paintings and Sculpture. London: Sotheby's (June 21, 1988): lot 66, 110.
O'Neill Morna. Walter Crane. The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010. 31.
Created 17 November 2025