Walter Crane was born in Liverpool, the second son of Thomas Crane, a portrait painter and miniaturist. He was a follower of the newer art movements and he came to study and appreciate the detailed senses of Pre-Raphaelite art, and was also a student of the renowned artist and critic John Ruskin. A set of coloured page designs to illustrate Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott" gained the approval of wood-engraver William James Linton to whom Walter Crane was apprenticed for three years (1859-1862). As a wood-engraver he had abundant opportunity for the study of the contemporary artists whose work passed through his hands, of Pre-Raphaelites Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais, as well as Alice in Wonderland illustrator Sir John Tenniel and Frederick Sandys. He was a student who admired the masters of the Italian Renaissance, however he was more influenced by the Elgin marbles in the British Museum.
Another important element in the development of his talent was the study of Japanese colour-prints, the methods of which he imitated in a series of toy-books, which started a new fashion.