Love's Altar [Love's Sanctuary]. 1870. Oil on canvas. 30 3/8 x 21 3/4 inches (787 x 55.5 cm). Collection of William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow, accession no. Br030. Image courtesy of the William Morris Gallery, reproduced for purposes of non-commercial academic research.
Crane exhibited Love's Altar at the Old Bond Street Gallery in 1870, no. 111. He later wrote a sonnet entitled "Love's Sanctuary" to accompany the work. This was published in Renascence, A Book of Verse in 1891:
No more I go to worship with the crowd
In Christian temples, pagan now to me,
No dim cathedral hears me pray aloud,
I sing no credo, as it used to be:
Though kneeling not beneath the roof of Rome,
Or in protesting fanes, I have a shrine –
A holiest of holies - Love's sweet home,
On whose white altar lies life's bread and wine.
There oft, in saddened times and weary hours,
To secret sanctuary do I flee,
Where one sweet presence soothes, like breath of flowers,
To whom their incense rises ceaselessly;
For there, though not a Roman devotee,
Sweet Virgin Mary I do worship thee.
This painting by a member of the Poetry Without Grammar School, unlike the early work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, could easily be mistaken for an early Italian Renaissance painting. Isobel Spencer has related how the picture received adverse criticism when first exhibited, largely due to its subject:
An irreverent interpretation of pilgrimage, in which a fervent youth kneels before the icon-image of the artist's beloved, Mary Frances Andrews. These devotions are accompanied by singers and musicians and on an altar are an illuminated missal and dishes for the celebration of mass. A smoking censer and flaming bowl also hint at pagan ritual, which is depicted in the Greek procession on the frieze above. The benevolent presence of Venus is heralded by a flight of doves, two of whom already bill and coo above the pilgrim. The painting is a surprisingly explicit demonstration of Crane's humanism, and his identification with the sensuous aestheticism expressed in Walter Pater's early writings, and the works of Simeon Solomon; sentiments made clear also in an accompanying sonnet. The painting reflects current developments in several ways. The careful arrangement and decorative colour of this picture parallels Crane's own recent toy books. His technique is very meticulous; involving Pre-Raphaelite attention to details, such as the ivy on the pilgrim staff and the winding path, which have each their part to play in the web of meaning. Exotic patterns like the devices on the frame and the altar cloth resemble those used by Rossetti and the blue and white pot repeats an aesthetic touch introduced the year before in a painting of Peacocks on a Terrace. But the most striking characteristic of "Love's Sanctuary" is its evocation of the light, decorative ambience of the Quattrocento rather than the grave grace of Greek or Graeco-Japanese styles which also prevailed in the later 1860s. The deep perspective, compartmented space and colour pattern was the result of careful study of Renaissance painting like that of Fra Filippo Lippi. [69-70]
Spencer speculates that the model for the pilgrim may have been Alessandro di Marco, the Italian model employed by many artists in the Pre-Raphaelite circle (75).
Greg Smith and Sarah Hyde have also emphasised the eclecticism of this painting and how it fit into the early Aesthetic Movement: "In addition to proclaiming the religion of love it is also a painting about art and the senses. It includes references to all the arts: Painting, Sculpture, Music, Architecture, and Poetry as well as the five senses: Sight, Hearing, Touch, Smell and Taste. The eclectic use of Classic, Renaissance, Japanese and Gothic motifs together with, in many of the details, a Pre-Raphaelite fidelity to nature, underlines the freedom felt by the Aesthetes to celebrate beauty wherever they found it" (108).
Contemporary Reviews of the Painting
When this picture was shown at the Old Bond Street Gallery it was unfavourably reviewed by the The Art Journal, although the reviewer, after initial misgivings, felt the artist was capable of doing better work. Love's Sanctuary, he says at first, "would seem to indicate an amount of eccentricity too great for reform":
the picture in question represents the incongruity of mediaeval treatment, coupled with classical costume and accessories. A pilgrim of love, habited as a palmer, is kneeling in prayer before an altar, which appears to be rather an irreverent parody on those to be seen in Roman Catholic and ritualistic places of worship: lights, sacramental wine, flowers, altar-piece, breviary, &c., are here all burlesqued. The picture, however, though (as regards the subject) has not much to recommend it, shows itself to be the work of one capable of better things. [211]
Bibliography
Crane, Walter. "Twelve Sonnets of Love, no. I." Renascence, A Book of Verse. London: Elkin Matthews at the Sign of the Bodley Head, 1891. 63.
Lambourne, Lionel. The Aesthetic Movement. London: Phaidon, 1996. 94-95.
Love's Altar. Art UK. Web. 18 November 2025.
"Old Bond Street Gallery." The Art Journal New Series IX (1 July 1870): 211. /p>
Smith, Greg and Sarah Hyde. Walter Crane 1845-1915. Artist, Designer and Socialist. London: Lund Humphries, 1989, cat. D1, 108.
Spencer, Isobel. Walter Crane. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc., 1975.
Created 18 November 2025