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William Strang
(1859 - 1921)
The artist’s daughter, Nancy, three quarter length, seated, 1912
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William Strang (1859 - 1921)
Size:
Height – 40.5cm
Width – 30.25cm
Strang’s only daughter Nancy held a particular place in her father’s heart. This portrait of her clearly illustrates how Strang desired to express his love of female beauty.
He once, recounted C.R. Ashbee, “… showed me a drawing of his, ‘I’ve tried all my life to do the pretty-pretty but it’s no good… I can’t’. He suddenly checked, looking at his little daughter Nancy and handed me a drawing of her, ‘but what do you think of that?'”.He could not cut corners, could not bring himself to suggest where he felt he must delineate the facts, as he saw them, of his daughter’s physiognomy, and it is this sincerity which lends her identity a force and integrity which can justifiably be called beauty. To alleviate and complement the intensity of the image, Strang introduced the still-life and hanging – bright with the colours of the Ballet Russe and redolent of pleasure.
Born Dumbarton, 13 Feb 1859; died Bournemouth, 12 April 1921. Scottish painter and printmaker. Following a brief apprenticeship with a shipbuilding firm in Clydesdale, he entered the Slade School of Art (1876) where he adhered to the uncompromising realism advocated by his teacher Alphonse Legros. After completing his studies at the Slade (1880), Strang became Legros’s assistant in the printmaking class for a year. For the next 20 years he worked primarily as an etcher. His etchings include landscapes in the tradition of Rembrandt, pastoral themes indebted to Giorgione and macabre genre subjects, marked by a sense of tension and suspended animation. He also etched 150 portraits of leading artistic and literary figures. The commitment to realism and psychological intensity that characterizes the best of Strang’s etched work is also evident in the paintings that dominated the latter half of his career. The influence of the Belgian and French Symbolists’ work and Strang’s growing confidence in the handling of colour combined in his mature style with a linear clarity and schematic colouring that is best seen in such works as Bank Holiday (1912; London, Tate). His oil portraits, for example Vita Sackville-West as Lady In a Red Hat (1918; Glasgow, A.G. & Mus.), are strikingly potent images of their time. An important collection of Strang’s graphic work is in the Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow. His sons Ian Strang (1886’1952) and David Strang (born 1887) were also printmakers.
