Artist. The daughter of Dr. Horace D. Crane and Mary O. Staples, Frederika Crane was born in Neenah but raised in Green Bay. In 1878, she left Wisconsin for New York City, where she studied painting with Frederic W. Freer and Henry Muhrman and became a member of the Art Students League. On returning to Green Bay, Crane taught classes in watercolor and china painting and also sold her own artwork. An active member of the Green Bay Art Club, she was among the women of the Art Club who assembled a loan exhibition of historically significant artifacts from the Green Bay area at the Kellogg Public Library in 1915. This exhibition was the original inspiration for the creation of the Neville Public Museum of Brown County, which opened to the public in 1927. Crane's close friend, the noted local historian Deborah Beaumont Martin was also involved with this civic project. View images by or related to Frederika Crane at Wisconsin Historical Images, and examples of her work in the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database. Hazelwood Historic House Museum, Green Bay (operated by the Brown County Historical Society) is home to a large group of Crane¿s hand-painted porcelain.

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[Source: "City History Pictured in Art Exhibits," Green Bay Gazette, July 23, 1927; Obituary, Green Bay Press Gazette, Dec. 29, 1930; Women of Northeast Wisconsin: Dreamers and Doers (Green Bay: American Association of University Women, 1994).]