SKU: 11982
William Strang
(1859 - 1921)
The Mill Girl
£24,000
Private Collection
William Strang (1859 - 1921)
Size:
Height – 101.6cm
Width – 76.2cm
PG Konody singled out The Buffet when reviewing The exhibition of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, Grosvenor Gallery, (The Observer, 17th June 1917) as one of a few works that made ‘an unusually striking display’:
The charm and refinement that have so often been found lacking in Mr. Strang’s works are conspicuously present in the figure of a woman with piquant features, in a gay print dress of the type vaguely called ‘futurist’ with light blue gauzy sleeves and a bright yellow neckerchief, ‘The Buffet’.
The stridant red plume in the black hat might be read as an illusion to war – white feathers were associated with peace (or cowardice) and red feathers were traditionally associated with war and courage.
From a painting of the same woman in the Manchester City Art Gallery, dating to 1916, the model can be identified as Panchita Zorolla, , ‘a striking portrait with that bare ‘thrown’ attractiveness with which this artist has plainly hinted that some day or other he will produce a masterpiece’ ( Spectator review , volume 117).
C.R. Ashbee, who sat for Strang, recalled that:
….in each of his portraits there is some touch of his sitters’ ugliness revealed in the beauty of the draughtsmanship….those of us who …have sat for our portraits and prize the results….are also grimly conscious of an unpleasant something in ourselves that we don’t mention but that our love of truthfulness would not have us conceal…they have the quality of Dr Johnson, they are lexicographical (CR Ashbee, unpublished typescript of memories, Victoria and Albet Museum, vol IV, p. 71, quoted in Athill, William Strang, 1981, p 22)
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.
