Daffodils

Category

Library Item

Item no

30847

Title

Daffodils

Description

2 personifications of Daffodils with trumpets and a dog. Text: 'The Daffodil his trumpet blows/ And after Spring a hunting goes'.

Artist / maker

Crane, Walter

Date

1895

Size

25.0 x 18.0 cm

Type

Publisher's print

Location

Art and Design Library

The daffodils are another light-hearted image. They are blowing their flower horns while a flower dog bounds at their feet. It is interesting to make a connection between images like this and Morna O'Neil's idea that these gardens are meant to represent a socialist ideal. By reading the text (written by Crane) we can understand that in this image daffodils are meant to be signalling the presence of Spring. Margaret Elen Demming wrote, 'Crane often represented gardens - both in his poems and floral picture books - as settings for transformation. Whether they took place at the scale of society or the individual, these transformation implied evolution, creativity, liberation of enlightenment' (1). In this case, Spring is waking up all of the flowers. At this time Spring was sometimes a politicised image of the rise of socialism, also seen in other works by Crane like Floral Fantasy in an Old English Garden.

(1) Demming quoted in Helen Stalker, 'From Toy Books to Bloody Sunday,' Tales from The Walter Crane Archive (Manchester: Whitworth Art Gallery), 2009, p. 52-54.

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Related subjects

Animals > Mammals > Dogs

People > Children > Boys

Plants > Flowers > Daffodils

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