William Strang

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For other people named William Strang, see William Strang (disambiguation).

William Strang
RA
Royal Academy
.

William Strang RA (13 February 1859 – 12 April 1921) was a Scottish painter and printmaker, notable for illustrating the works of Bunyan, Coleridge and Kipling.

Early life

Potato Lifting, etching, 1892

Strang was born at

counting-house of a firm of shipbuilders, then in 1875, when he was sixteen, went to London.[1] There, he was a pupil of Edward Poynter for three months,[2] before studying drawing and etching under Alphonse Legros at the Slade School of Fine Art for six years.[1] Strang had great success as an etcher and became assistant master in the etching class. He was one of the founding members of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, and his work was part of its first exhibition in 1881. Some of his early plates were published in The Portfolio
and other art magazines.

Work

He worked in many techniques: etching, drypoint, mezzotint, sand-ground mezzotint, burin engraving, lithography and woodcut. He cut a large wood engraving of a man ploughing, later published by the Art for Schools Association. A privately produced catalogue of his engraved work contained more than three hundred items. Amongst his earlier works were Tinkers, St. Jerome, A Woman Washing Her Feet, An Old Book-stall with a Man Lighting His Pipe from a Flare, and The Head of a Peasant Woman on sand-ground mezzotint. Later plates such as Hunger, The Bachelor's End and The Salvation Army were also important.

Some of his best etchings were done as series—one of the earliest, illustrating poet William Nicholson's Ballad of

Ali Baba
(1896).

Sir Henry Newbolt
, and other distinguished men also sat for Strang. Proofs from these plates have been much valued.

Painting

Strang produced many paintings,

Royal Academy, The International Society, and several German exhibitions. He painted a decorative series of scenes from the story of Adam and Eve for the library of a Wolverhampton landowner named Hodson; they were exhibited at the Whitechapel
exhibition in 1910. He made some drawings of the nude figure in silver point and red and black chalk.

He also painted

landscapes, mostly small in size. In later years he developed a style of drawing in red and black chalk, with the whites and high lights rubbed out, on paper brushed with wash. His method gives qualities of delicate modelling and refined form and gradations akin to the drawings of Hans Holbein the Younger. He drew portraits in this manner of many members of the Order of Merit for the royal library at Windsor Castle. In 1902 Strang retired from the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, as a protest against the inclusion in its exhibitions of etched or engraved reproductions of pictures. His work was subsequently seen principally in the exhibitions of the Royal Academy, the Society of Twelve and the International Society, to which he was elected in 1905. Strang was also elected an associate engraver of the Royal Academy when that degree was revived in 1906.[5] William Strang was master of the Art Workers' Guild in 1907, where his portrait can be seen. He is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery, London.[6]

  • Lady with a Red Hat (Vita Sackville-West) (1918; Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow)
    Lady with a Red Hat (Vita Sackville-West) (1918; Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow)
  • The Temptation (1899; Tate Gallery)
    The Temptation (1899;
    Tate Gallery
    )

Literary works

Strang also ventured into literature, creating "Death and the Ploughman's Wife", an illustrated ballad in 1888 (published 1894 by Lawrence and Bullen). He also wrote short stories, but these were not published.

Recognition

Strang was a member of the Art Workers' Guild, being elected as Master in 1907.[7][8] In 1918, he became President of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers and in 1921 was elected an Engraver Member of the Royal Academy.[9]

Family

The Artist's Wife, Agnes Strang, 1904

In 1885, William Strang married Agnes McSymon Rogerson (d. 1933), also from Dumbarton. They had four sons and one daughter. Their sons Ian Strang (1886–1952) and David Strang (1887–1967) were both artists.[10] William had at least one granddaughter, Joan Strang, born of David's short-lived marriage to the English soprano Dora Labbette.[11]

In 1955 David Strang gave impressions of the bulk of William Strang's etchings to the

National Gallery of Scotland, many of which he had annotated for clarification of the subject matter.[12]

Etchings

References

  1. ^ a b Jones, Sarah Urwin (10 October 2014). "William Strang's rare talent is etched in history". Glasgow Herald. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
  2. ^ "Manoah's Offering, from the etching by William Strang" in The Magazine of Art, Vol. 1 (1903), p. 178
  3. ^ "Beardsley (Aubrey Vincent)" in T. Bose, Paul Tiessen, eds., Bookman's Catalogue Vol. 1 A-L: The Norman Colbeck Collection (UBC Press, 1987), p. 41
  4. ^ Goodchild, Anne. "William Strang 1859–1921". Tate Etc. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
  5. ^ Marsh, Jan. "William Strang (1859–1921), Painter and etcher". National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved 30 October 2014.
  6. ^ Paths of Glory. Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery. 1997. p. 95.
  7. ^ Past Master List (PDF). Art Workers' Guild.
  8. ^ Joseph Edwards, Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence Baron Pethick-Lawrence (1908). The Reformers' Year Book. p. 208.
  9. ^ "William Strang". National Galleries. Retrieved 20 October 2021.
  10. ISBN 978-0-19-923965-8
    .
  11. ^ International, MusicWeb. "Charles A. Hooey – MusicWeb-International". musicweb-international.com.
  12. ^ National Gallery of Scotland: David Strang Gift, collection notes
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Strang, William". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 982.

External links

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