Lot 121
£53,951
Scottish Paintings & Sculpture
Auction: Evening Session | 7th December 2023 at 18:00
Signed and dated 1912, oil on canvas
William Strang was an artist of many facets. He was both a pre-eminent etcher, pivotal in the medium’s revival at the start of the 20th century, and a popular society portraitist, regularly commissioned to depict key figures of the day. Strang’s diverse frame of artistic reference made it hard for critics to place him canonically. One minute he appeared a Realist, touching on contemporary social issues, the next he seemed more akin to a Symbolist, mining Classical, Biblical and allegorical subjects. He encompassed these multitudes with much skill and integrity, earning himself a respected position in the turn-of-the-century London art world. The portrait offered here illustrates how these seemingly disparate threads manage to interlace within his work to unique and impactful effect: concurrently truthful to its subject, decoratively appealing and enigmatic in atmosphere.
Strang was born in Dumbarton, Scotland in 1859. The son of a builder, his working-class roots were an important part of his identity, including artistically. Much of his oeuvre (notably his etched works) were Socialist in sympathy and alluded to the struggles of the working and impoverished classes. This, combined with his training at the Slade under the French Realist Alphonse Legros, naturally aligned him with the ideologies of the Arts and Crafts movement with whom he also shared a commitment to the rigour of Life Drawing and a reverence for the Old Masters. The prominent designer and architect C. R. Ashbee became a major patron.
This focus on draughtsmanship is very much evident in Strang’s work within the genre of portraiture. He produced over 500 portrait sketches in the early 1900s, drawn in black and red chalk. This choice of materials was a deliberate and characteristic referential nod to an earlier Master; in this instance Hans Holbein. The technical prowess and incisive ‘truth’ of these sketches proved so popular that Strang was able to make two consecutive trips to New York in 1904 and 1905 to execute drawings of his many American patrons.
Strang also painted many important commissions in oil, notably those with literary connections including Thomas Hardy, Vita Sackville-West and the poet John Masefield. He exhibited oils regularly at the Royal Academy and the International Society, of which he became Vice-President in 1908. In the manner of Whistler, Strang rarely titled his works under the sitter’s names, rather in the guise of subject paintings. An example of this is 1913’s The Opera Cloak, which in fact depicts his beloved daughter Nancy, her cloak held by one of her brothers in the left of the composition.
We believe that the highly attractive portrait offered here for sale, Girl with Fan, also potentially depicts Nancy Strang. Dated 1912, it was executed just one year earlier than The Opera Cloak. The sitter shares the same physical characteristics: the assertive jut of the chin, dark brows and pronounced cupid’s bow of the top lip. Strang clearly revelled in the depiction of women. His female sitters are invariably afforded an elegant sensuality and contemplative demeanour. As the artist once remarked to his patron Ashbee, “I’ve tried all my life to do the pretty-pretty but it’s no good…I can’t”. Instead, his likenesses evoke character, modernity and intellect.
Leaning away from the overt, painterly glamour of his peers Sargent and Lavery, Strang’s portraiture was not, as one critic of the day described, “polite”. As we have seen, he was neither categorizable as purely a Traditionalist nor a Modernist; his style referenced broadly from both spheres, resulting in a manner entirely his own. Strang’s focus was on objective truth married subtly with a decorative aspect, producing an effect that was both distinctive and widely admired. He was critically revered for his exceptional, considered compositions and the way he eschewed anything extraneous in terms of detail or technique. His use of colour too, was praised for being confident and spare. We see that here with the striking choice of gold, purple, pink and green, linked subtly and balanced precisely, the fundamentally discordant hues somehow attaining harmony.
William Strang’s work was featured in prominent exhibitions across many of London’s most respected galleries, including the Grosvenor Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, Agnews and the Fine Art Society. 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. He died suddenly in 1921, shortly after his election as Royal Academician.