April Tee (1889) (Ivory)

While others celebrated New Year’s Eve, Walter Crane (1845–1915) mourned December’s passing. Created sometime around 1889 with his daughter Beatrice (1873–1935), The Procession of the Months synthesizes Walter’s two earlier treatments of the calendrical theme, reflecting age across the gutter between text and image. Walter illustrated the verse that Beatrice wrote. In the case of The Procession of the Months, it seems the images came later, for the preface notes the poem’s creation when she was “quite a child”, demonstrating how “each Season, with its ever-changing beauties, was fully realized by the child’s quick, artistic imagination.” 

The trees are budding forth, the grass is springing green, and April, young and fair, appears to be on the scene. Pale golden is her hair, her eyes are misty blue, and even when she smiles her tears fall like the dew. Clad all in tender green, she comes with timid feet; A basket with her bringing, filled full with blossoms sweet. The primrose pale and fair, the yellow daffodil, the windflower, wild hyacinth, and other flowers still. All these she casts around, to show that spring is here, with first a smile so sweet but dropping next a tear.