# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Crowe, Eyre

​CROWE, EYRE (1824–1910), artist, eldest son of Eyre Evans Crowe [q.v.] by his first wife Margaret, daughter of Capt. Archer of Kiltimon, co. Wicklow, was born in London on 3 Oct. 1824. Sir Joseph Archer Crowe [q. v. Suppl. I] was his younger brother. His sister Amy Mary Anne (d. 1865) married in 1862, as his first wife, Col. (Sir) Edward Thackeray, V.C., a cousin of the novelist. During his childhood Eyre's father removed with his family to France, where they remained till 1844. In Paris Eyre and his brother Joseph learnt drawing as boys of M. Brasseur and in 1839 Eyre became a pupil of the great painter Paul Delaroche. In 1844 Crowe accompanied his master and his fellow pupils to Rome. With one of them, the distinguished French painter and sculptor Jean Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), Crowe enjoyed a lifelong friendship, and they corresponded with one another till Gérôme's death.
In 1844 Crowe's family resumed residence in London, where he joined them and spent most of his remaining life. ​He continued his art education at the Royal Academy schools, and first exhibited at the Academy in 1846, sending the picture 'Master Prynne searching Archbishop Laud's pocket in the Tower.' Next year he engaged in the competition for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament, taking for his subject 'The Battle of Agincourt.'
Meanwhile his relations with Thackeray, whose acquaintance he made in Paris, grew closer. In 1845 he drew a caricature of the novelist in Turkish dress, and transferred to wood the sketches which Thackeray drew for 'Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo' (1846). In April 1851 he became Thackeray's secretary and amanuensis and spent much time with him at the British Museum in preparing material for 'Esmond.' Crowe was Thackeray's companion in his lecturing tour to the United States (Nov. 1852 to April 1853), and he vividly described the experience in 'With Thackeray in America' (1893, illustrated), while he gave many glimpses of the intimacy in his 'Haunts and Homes of Thackeray' (1897, with illustrations).
After returning from America Crowe worked zealously at his art, mainly occupying himself with historical and genre themes, which caught the popular taste and were treated with precision and delicacy if without distinctive power. A few of his subjects were suggested by tours in France. He exhibited at the Academy from 1848 to 1904 with small interruption. His last exhibits there were 'Shelley at Marlow' and' 'John Bright at the Reform Club, 1883.' His best work was done between 1860 and 1881; it included 'Brick Court, Middle Temple, April 1774,' depicting the morning after Goldsmith's death (1863); 'Mary Stuart, Feb. 8, 1586' (1868); 'Old Mortality' (1871); 'The Rehearsal' (1876); 'The Queen of. the May' (1879); and 'Sir Roger de Coverley and the Spectator at Westminster Abbey' (1881). He was elected A.R.A. in 1875 and was after Frith's death in 1909 the Academy's oldest member. He also exhibited at the British Institution in 1850 and 1861. Several of Crowe's works are in public galleries. Mosaics of William Hogarth and Sir Christopher Wren, from his designs in oils, as well as a lunette, 'A Sculptor with a Nude Model and two Pupils,' and a chalk drawing, 'A Dead Stork on the Bank of a Stream' (1860) are in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington; 'The Founder of English Astronomy, Jeremiah Horrocks' (R.A. 1891), is in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; 'Nelson's Last Farewell to England' (R.A. 1888) was purchased for the Castle Museum, Norwich, in 1905; and an example of his work is at Bristol Art Gallery.
In later life he acted as an inspector and examiner under the science and art department, South Kensington. Outliving his contemporaries and spending his last years in much seclusion, he was long an habitué of the Reform Club, which he joined in 1866. He died, unmarried, in London on 12 Dec. 1910, and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery. He owned a water-colour portrait of himself (10 in. by 7 in.) by Thackeray, which was sold at Sotheby's on 27 July 1911 for 31l (The Times, 28 July 1911). A portrait in oils of Crowe as a young man by himself belongs to his half-sister in Paris.
[The Times, 13 and 14 Dec. 1910; Crowe's works cited; Melville's Life of Thackeray; Sir Joseph Crowe's Reminiscences, 1895; J. G. Wilson, Thackeray in the United States, 2 vols. 1904; Graves, Royal Acad. Exhibitors, 1905; Brit. Instit. Exhibitors, 1908; private information.]