• Small font

• Artist
  Unknown (Italian)
• Title
  Book of Hours
• Date of Production
  circa 1450
• Medium
  vellum, illuminated in gold, ink & watercolour
• Dimensions
• Credit Details
  Gift of Colonel the Honourable R.A. Crouch, 1944

Crouch Manuscripts

The Art Gallery of Ballarat's Crouch Manuscript collection contains a variety of exquisite illuminated texts produced in England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands between the 12^th and 16^th centuries.

This exhibition focuses on a selection of rarely seen medieval European manuscripts from the Crouch collection.

Richard Armstrong Crouch was born in 1868 to a pioneering Ballarat family. He was educated in Ballarat and studied Law at Melbourne University. He worked as a solicitor before joining the Australian Army in the late 1890s. Later became the youngest member of the first Federal Parliament. He abandoned politics in 1931 to become a traveller, art collector, historian and philanthropist. Colonel Crouch died in 1949 leaving this significant collection to the Gallery.