Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 20. (Budapest, 2001)

Katalin GELLÉR: Walter Crane and the Art Nouveau as a Hungarian Style

estries. The decorative evocation of classical Greek art in the former's gobelin Cassandra (around 1909) is similar to Crane's works. The ship motif known from the classical age is a historical-narrative and decorative motif in both the background of Cassandra and Walter Crane's frieze {Sirene and Ship) designed for the painter Lord Leighton. The decorative reshaping and wide use of the classical tradition was probably also encouraged by the English master. The lily loved so much and used in paintings, glass designs, wallpapers by Walter Crane reappared in Körösfői Kriesch's paintings with similar richness and allusion to its symbolical implications (Lilies, 1906), in his furniture pieces (Wardrobe and bookcase with lilies, 1906, 1908), as well as in Sándor Nagy

's paintings (Our garden, 1902; Ave Miriam, 1904) and his glass windows in Marosvásárhely (Angels fom Julia fair maiden, 1913) and the Pesterzsébet frescos (detail showing three angels, 1938) proving the long afterlife of Pre-Raphaelitism in Hungary. During his exhibition in Budapest, Walter Crane also held a lecture on 16 October 1900, reading excerpts from his book Line and Form (1900) published in Hungarian in 1910, translated by Gyula Mihalik. The woodcut advertising the reading was published in several papers including the colour supplement to Magyar Iparművészet 1900. Next to the typical PreRaphaelite female figure turning back in a subtle arch there are "Hungarian" flowers: stylized tulips and cornflowers which were already in use in the workshop of Hungarian designers such as Henrik Giergl.

10 The European fame of the English master was princially based on his illustrations for children's books. His successful debut in Hungary was also due to the cult of English books and the innumerable children's stories also known here. Though in his autobiography he did not devote much attention to his illustrating work, he also published a history of illustrated books from the beginnings to his contemporaries, in which he exactly defined the new unified concept of the book including the place of illustration: "I think that book illustration should be something more than a collection of accidental sketches. Since one cannot ignore the constructive organic element in the formation - the idea of the book itself - it is so far inartistic to leave it out of account in designing work intended to form an essential or integral part of that book."

11 It was in book art that Walter Crane's influence was the greatest. Nearly all Hungarian designers at the beginning of the 20

th century looked upon him as their model. The decorative manner of drawing as in classical Greek vases first appeared in Aladár Körösfői Kriesch's illustrations of some poems by Elek Koronghi Lippich (Budapest, 1903, Pallas) in what was a breakthrough of secessionist illustration in Hungary. He could see several similar examples of book illustration and ceramics in Crane's Budapest exhibition. Sándor Nagy

's illustrations to the same book of poems already displayed the impact of international, German and Austrian Art Nouveau, but a sketch to the book suggests that originally he constructed the illustrations for double pages, too.

12 In his illustrations drawn for Jenő Komjáthy

's poems around 1906 the influence of Walter Crane, the illustrating style of the Ver Sacrum periodical of Vienna and the less known designer of Eastern European origin, E.M.Lilien 's drawing style can be discerned.

13 Walter Crane's influence was intermingled with that of other contemporary designers and the pioneering innovations launched by the Kelmscott Press. Mrs Sándor Nagy

's drawings for children are closest to the work of her fellow women artists Kate Greenaway and Jessie Marion King. The double page brought into fashion by British book publication was most successfully adopted in the children's storybooks of Mariska Undi. Morris's omame framing spread by the Kelmscott Press was borrowed by many including the Kner publications.

14 The sumptuously adorned border was also typical of the Art Nouveau period of Almos Jaschik.

15 Walter Crane's exhibition gave a boost to the Hungarian current of the Art Nouveau, legitimating the artists and theorists advocating this