SKU: 11982
William Strang
(1859 - 1921)
The Mill Girl
£24,000
Private Collection
William Strang (1859 - 1921)
Signed and dated
Oil on canvas
Size:
Height – 76cm
Width – 63.5cm
Literature: Llewellyn, Sacha, and Paul Liss. Portrait of an Artist. Liss Llewellyn, 2021, p.95.
The model is likely to be Dora Labbette who was married briefly to David Strang, William’s son, in 1918.
Ibbs and Tillett leaflet, circa 1919.
Dora Labbette (1898-1984) was an English soprano who won the Gold Medal at the Guildhall School of Music, and became well-known as a ballad singer. She was represented by the famous concert agency Ibbs and Tillett, In 1918 she married David Strang who was the son of William Strang, painter and etcher, living at 20 Hamilton Terrace. They soon separated and she continued her career but whilst married to David she was painted by her father-in-law,William Strang. A group portrait, The Singer which features Dora, David Strang and William Strang himself is known through an illustration from the Illustrated London News but it is believed that this painting was destroyed by the painter when Dora and David separated.
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of truthfulness would not have us conceal…they have the quality of Dr Johnson, they are lexicographical (CR Ashbee, unpublished typescript of memories, Victoria and Albet Museum, vol IV, p. 71, quoted in Athill, William Strang, 1981, p 22)
This painting is featured on The Victorian Web
We are grateful to Jeanne Strang for assistance
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.
