promoted to be commercial attaché for the whole of Europe, based in Paris. In 1883 he was secretary to the Danube Conference in London; in 1889 plenipotentiary at the Samoa Conference in Berlin and in 1890 British envoy at the Telegraph Congress in Paris. For these services he was created a C.B. on 14 March 1885, and K.C.M.G on 21 May 1890. Art historical writing In 1846, at the suggestion of his father, Crowe began to collect materials for a history of the early Flemish painters. The next year, while travelling between Berlin and Vienna, Crowe made a chance acquaintance with a young Italian art student, Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. This acquaintance was renewed later, and cemented into friendship in London, where Cavalcaselle had fled as a political refugee. They decided to collaborate on the work on Flemish painters, which Crowe had in hand. They visited collections and searched manuscripts together, and no detail was decided until it had been fully debated between them. The text itself was written by Crowe. They went on to collaborate on histories of Italian painting, and monographs on Titian and Raphael. Family Crowe married Asta von Barby (c.1841-1908), daughter of Baron Gustav von Barby and Eveline von Ribbentrop, in Gotha, Germany, 11 April 1861. They had three sons, including Sir Eyre Crowe and four daughters. Death He died at Schloss Gamburg in Franconia on 6 September 1896. Publications With Cavacaselle: Titian: his Life and Times (in two volumes, 1877) Raphael: his Life and Works (in two volumes 1883-5) Crowe also edited Jakob Burckhardt's Cicerone, or Art Guide to Painting in Italy (1873-9), and Kugler's Handbook of Painting: the German, Flemish, and Dutch Schools (1874). In 1865 he published an autobiography, Reminiscences of Thirty-five Years of my Life. Crowe and Cavalcaselle's History of Painting was under revision by Crowe up to the time of his death, and then by Sandford Arthur Strong (died 1904) and Robert Langton Douglas, who brought out first and second volumes of Murray's new six-volume edition in 1903; the third volume, edited by Langton Douglas, appeared in 1909. A reprint of the original edition, brought up to date by annotations by Edward Hutton, was published by Dent in three volumes in 1909. References Sources Attribution: External links Brief Cavalcaselle biography English art historians 1825 births 1896 deaths Knights Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George 19th-century British journalists British