Art Filled Days

Not much has changed on the outside of this spectacular building in London. Now classified as a World Heritage Site, the buildings were designed by Christopher Wren and built between 1696 and 1712. This complex of buildings was used as a hospital until 1869. It was home to the Royal Naval College, Greenwich from 1873 to 1998.

It has been something of an on-going frustration that my sources of images for Reusable Art have so few Christmas images. I had hoped to have at least double the images that I did last year. Throughout the year I have added a number of new images and the current collection of wonderful vintage Christmas images includes this one which illustrates a portion of the true story of Christmas.

In a bit of a departure from fairies, flowers and other highly stylized images, this vintage Christmas image by Walter Crane looks like a wood block engraving. It depicts part of the Biblical story of Jesus' birth in a bold and dramatic fashion.

With his typical flair for the dramatic, Crane transforms the clouds into the form of angels who are sent from God to tell three shepherds of Christ's birth. This Christmas image is large enough (400x620) to use on a greeting card and was published in A book of Christmas Verse in 1895.

I chose this image as my image of the week because it is in keeping with the talented Crane's body of work due to the clever way the angels appear out of the clouds.

To download the full-sized version, please visit Three Shepherds on Christmas Day.

Prior to writing about Walter Crane, I had decided that I would not write about what school of art influenced his work or focus heavily on listing the multitude of works known to come from his talented hands. I looked at Wikipedia and a number of other websites including a number provided by academic institutions and was left wondering about the man behind the pen so to speak.