![The Renaissance of Venus [The Renascence of Venus]](6.jpg)
The Renaissance of Venus [The Renascence of Venus]. 1877. Tempera on canvas. 54 1/2 x 72 1/2 inches (138.4 x 184.1 cm). Collection of Tate Britain, accession no. NO2920. Image courtesy of Tate Britain under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivitives licence (CC BY-NC-ND).
Crane exhibited this painting at the first Grosvenor Gallery exhibition in 1877, no. 70, and then later in the English Fine Arts Section of the Exposition Universelle held in Paris in 1878. This work has long been considered to be one of Crane's masterpieces and was his first large-scale painting dealing with a classical subject. When the painting was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877 it was hung in a fairly good place in the large west gallery, near a group of paintings by Edward Burne-Jones. Spencer has suggested a reason for Crane choosing this subject: "He believed that the idea of beauty re-born was relevant to his own time and that society was about to witness a revival of culture such as had been experienced only at rare moments in its history. One such period was the Italian Renaissance which Victorians were becoming increasingly aware of through the work of historians and connoisseurs such as Burkhardt, Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and Pater" (74). Crane's friend and patron J.R. Wise had seen a coloured sketch for the picture and offered to secure Crane against loss in order to enable him to complete the large picture. Wise therefore advanced him part of the price of the picture on the understanding that if a purchaser came forward when the picture was exhibited then the money would be returned to him. In 1882 the painting was bought by G.F. Watts and in 1913 it was given by his widow Mary Seton Watts to the National Gallery of British Art, now Tate Britain, in accordance with her husband's wishes.
In September 1871 Crane and his wife had gone to Italy for their honeymoon. During their extended stay they spent much time in Florence where Crane became familiar with early Renaissance artists of the 15th century, particularly Sandro Botticelli. In his reminiscences Crane records: "Then to the fascinating Uffizi and Pitti Galleries, with their gems of Florentine art. Botticelli was not at that time in the honoured places, not having been rediscovered by the critics, but more or less scattered, and sometimes 'skied' in less important rooms, but I shall never forget the charm of his beautiful Spring and the Venus" (189). The Renascence of Venus has obviously been greatly influenced by Botticelli's The Birth of Venus that Crane admired in the Uffizi Gallery. Both feature the full-length nude figure of the goddess of love emerging from the Mediterranean sea. Venus, with her long wind-swept hair, stands in the foreground with her feet just in the water. A train of white doves, considered sacred to Venus, flutter around the goddess. Three of Venus's attendants have recently emerged from the sea and are kneeling, standing, or sitting on the shore in the right midground. A classical temple stands on a promontory that juts into the sea in the centre midground. A sailing ship can be seen to the far left. The work was executed in tempera, the same medium Botticelli used for his painting, giving the work the chalky surface of the frescoes Crane had seen during his visit to Italy.
Morna O'Neill felt that this work borrowed from the established norms of both decorative art and Old Master paintings but was a radical subversion of history painting:
The rough canvas, flattened perspective, and experimental medium announce the status of the painting as a decorative object…. Crane's Renaissance of Venus exudes the cool, chalky blue hues of a Renaissance fresco. A nubile Venus stands on the shore of a rocky inlet, ankle deep in clear water. Her pose is contemplative, recalling that of the ancient Venus Esquilina, while are flowing blond hair and position in the composition bring to mind Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus. A series of prominently placed shells perhaps provides an additional illusion to the Botticelli painting or even the ascetic Quattrocento landscapes of Andrea Mantegna or Giovanni Bellini. All the traditional attributes of Venus are included in Crane's painting: on her right is a myrtle bush, which is echoed by other myrtles dotting the shoreline amid cypress and pine trees; an almond tree blossoms near a ruined round temple. Usually Praxiteles Venus of Cnidus, the most celebrated ancient sculpture of the female nude, adorns a temple that is open on all sides. Instead, Crane placed the Venus de Milo inside his temple. Dolphins create white ripples in the bright-green water of the middle distance, while far out on the left a ship sails in the bright blue sea...However, these details relate no discernible narrative; rather, they serve merely as a backdrop of mundane (if classicized) activity. A trail of doves in the cloudy sky arches around Venus in a swooping line. Like the three attendants accompanying the goddess, the birds provide a contrast to the static figure of the goddess herself. These maidens offer diverse views of the female figure: one is seated, another standing, and a third is emerging from the water. [23-25]
![The Renaissance of Venus [The Renascence of Venus]](6b.jpg)
Sketch for The Renaissance of Venus, 1877. Pen and black ink on tan paper; 10 1/4 x 13 3/8 inches (26 x 34 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy of Bonhams, London.
The uncertainties in the drawing of the nude female figures noted by contemporary critics were partly the result of Crane's lack of formal academic training, but also because his wife refused to allow him to study from the female nude figure. Crane was therefore forced to engage male models to pose for his female figures. Venus was drawn from the well-known male model Alessandro di Marco. Despite the anatomical alterations made by the artist, W. Graham Robertson has recorded that when Crane prevailed upon Frederic Leighton to come out to his studio in Shepherd's Bush to pronounce upon the painting, Leighton remarked: "But my dear fellow, that is not Aphrodite - that's Alessandro!" (39).
Venus was a popular subject for Victorian artists associated with the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Movements. A Venus Rising from the Sea was painted by Edward Burne-Jones in c.1870 based on a design of 1864 for "The Story of Cupid and Psyche" from William Morris's The Earthly Paradise. Crane's friend J.R. Spencer Stanhope painted a version of Venus Rising from the Sea in 1885. An enamel on copper version of this subject by Henry Holiday of c.1899 was included in the Peter Rose and Albert Gallichan sale at Christie's on September 30, 2021, lot 284.
Contemporary Reviews of the Painting
This painting received very mixed reviews when it was shown at the Grosvenor and certainly not all were favourable. The reviewer for The Examiner wrote: "Mr. Crane has still much to learn in the manner of expressive draughtsmanship, as the nude figure of Venus testifies; but the design of his work as a whole exhibits a very remarkable feeling for ornamental beauty, and the execution of certain parts of it - of clear sea water, distant landscapes, and the almond tree delicately traced against the sky - is a marvel of pure colour and sound workmanship. Of all the younger essays in imaginative painting to be found in the Gallery, this is, indeed, to our thinking, the most original and the most hopeful" (qtd. in Crane 174). A critic for The Art Journal particularly admired the figure of Venus: "Walter Crane's Renaissance of Venus (170), whom we see standing her nude height by the lip of the sea, in full presence of a number of admiring nymphs, may not be strictly true in the movement of every line, but it is a remarkably beautiful figure notwithstanding" (244).
![Detail of The Renaissance of Venus [The Renascence of Venus]](6c.jpg)
![Detail of The Renaissance of Venus [The Renascence of Venus]](6d.jpg)
Details of the painting. Left: Venus and columns in the distance. Right: Three nudes at right.
W.M. Rossetti, writing in The Academy, gave the picture its highest praise:
Mr. Crane's chief contribution is also rather high up; however, it can be adequately estimated. It is named The Renaissance of Venus, a title which one has to think over a little before one hits upon any genuine meaning for it; but we suppose it to signify substantially "The Re-birth of Beauty"; Venus, as the symbol of beauty, re-born at the period of the Renaissance of art and culture. At any rate, Mr. Crane has painted a charming and delicious picture, full of gracious purity - one which holds its own well even against such formidable competition as that of Mr. Burne-Jones. We see a liquid bay and sands, the ruins of a classic temple, three women bathing, an almond-tree in bloom, white doves darting and hovering about, and in the left foreground the queenly apparition of Venus. As in Mr. Armstrong's [Thomas Armstrong] picture, blue is here the predominant colour, but in a lighter key; a sweet, clear, brilliant blue, not chilly, but softly limpid. [467]
F.G. Stephens in The Athenaeum lamented Crane's dependence on the work of the early Italian painters:
On the other side of Mr. Jones's [Edward Burne-Jones] compartment will be found another symptom of delight in the old North Italian school; it is Umbrian in defect of colour, Venetian in luxury of sentiment, Florentine in the imperfectly expressed sense of grace, the elaborate draftsmanship and romantic inspiration. This is Mr. Crane's beautiful Renaissance of Venus (70), a landscape, with antique ruins, on the banks of the sea; a questionably drawn Venus naked on our left. This delicious picture is marked by curious affectations, and betrays as much lack of independence and stamina…. This lack of independence is traceable in the whole of the painters, even in a degree in Mr. Jones; but to Messrs. Stanhope and Crane especially. The style of thought and painting which is affected by these extremely able and cultivated men is nowadays at least the result of culture, over refinement, and caprice. [583-84]
The Builder felt Crane failed to achieve his desired goals in this picture:
We can hardly accept Mr. Walter Crane's Renaissance of Venus as fulfilling its title. The old legend of the birth of Venus from the sea is supposed to be here made anew for us by a fair figure of a more or less modern beauty standing in sparkling shallow water in the foreground. So far as there is any localising of scene, it is an Italian landscape, with a half-ruined temple à la Claude in the middle distance; but the figures are not Italian, nor, indeed, of any very distinctly marked type. The rather meagre contours and hard texture of the principal figure will hardly answer to anyone's ideal of a modern Venus. There is more real grace in one of the bathers on the bank in the middle plane of the picture, who stands nearly with her back to the spectator. Our impression is that this sort of thing should be done better if done at all. It only appeals to a sensuous impression of corporeal beauty, and is not beautiful enough to be successful in that light. [440]
The critic of The Spectator positively disliked this work, particularly the figure of Venus:
Walter Crane, the clever designer of the Babies' Opera, sends two contributions, the larger of which is entitled the Renaissance of Venus. This picture is an unfortunate example of what happens to a man when he endeavours without sufficient knowledge to rival an old master. There is probably nothing much worse in this exhibition than the figure of Venus in this picture. It resembles a hard piece of discoloured putty more than anything else we can think of. [664]
Bibliography
An Aesthetic Odyssey. The Peter Rose and Albert Gallichan Collection. London: Christie's (September 30, 2021): lot 284, 260-61.
"Art. The Grosvenor Gallery." The Spectator L (May 26, 1877): 664-65.
The Botticelli Renaissance. Berlin: Gemäldegalerie Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2015. 360.
Calloway, Stephen and Lynn Federle Orr. The Cult of Beauty. The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900. London: V& A Publishing, 2011, 173.
"The Grosvenor Gallery." The Art Journal XXXIX (1877): 244.
"The Grosvenor Gallery." The Builder XXXV (5 May 1877): 439-40.
Konody, Paul G. The Art of Walter Crane. London: George Bell & Sons, 1902, 95.
O'Neill Morna. Walter Crane. The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010, 19-20 & 23-27.
The Renaissance of Venus. Art UK. Web. 20 November 2025.
The Renaissance of Venus. Tate Britain. Web. 20 November 2025.
Robertson, W. Graham: Time Was. The Reminiscences of W. Graham Robertson. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1931.
Rossetti, William Michael. "The Grosvenor Gallery." The Academy XI (26 May 1877): 467-68.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. The Grosvenor Gallery Exhibition." The Athenaeum No. 2584 (5 May 1877): 583-84.
Victorian Watercolours & Illustrations from a Private Collection. London: Bonhams (19 November 2008): lot 22, 27. https://www.bonhams.com/auction/17023/lot/22/walter-crane-british-1845-1915-venus-renascens-unframed/
Created 20 November 2025