How did Benedetto Croce influence R.G. Collingwood's philosophy of art?

Benedetto Croce exerted a significant influence on his disciple R.G. Collingwood, particularly regarding the nature of art as an autonomous form of expression.1

Collingwood’s Principles of Art (1938) reflects several key Crocean themes:

• Rejection of Representation: Like Croce, Collingwood dismissed the idea that art is a form of representation or a means to describe independently identifiable states of mind.1
• Art as Expression: Both philosophers viewed art as an end in itself rather than a craft or a tool for classification. They argued that expression must reside within the form of the work itself, providing the particularity of experience rather than general descriptions.1
• Autonomy of Art: Following Croce’s extreme view of artistic autonomy, Collingwood sought to justify the revolutionary practices of his contemporaries—such as the post-Symbolist poetry of T.S. Eliot—by framing art as an independent, non-descriptive activity.1

While Collingwood integrated these ideas into his own theory of the imagination, he shared with Croce a foundation in Idealist metaphysics, which both used to distinguish aesthetic intuition from conceptual classification.1