Volume 1, Issue 2, April 2009
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Gallery Information | Artist List | Contact Us
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Dear Friends,
Spring has arrived at last!
We are pleased to present this outstanding work by the Scottish painter William Strang, as a harbinger of the season and the delights of summer yet to come.
In this picture, Strang casts aside the correctness of a respected Royal Academy elder and embraces the fresh ideas, forms, and colors of the French Symbolists and Nabis working across the channel. That this stalwart Scot, in the last year of his life, could combine the idyllic reverie of an artist like Puvis de Chavannes with the directness and intensity of a Paul Gauguin to produce The Sunbathers, is truly remarkable.
It is also inspirational. We live in a time when all of us are being challenged, even forced, to find new ways of doing things. Old and tested formulas aren't working the way they used to. Looking at great works of art renews our optimism and refreshes our spirits. If this artist can so successfully transform his vision of the world and create a stunning new reality, then so can we.
Thank you for your positive feedback regarding last month's newsletter and welcome to the second issue. As always, we welcome visitors and are happy to answer questions regarding our inventory. Prices gladly given upon request.
Sincerely,
Joyce and Kevin Anderson
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WILLIAM STRANG
Scottish, 1859-1921
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Click Image to Enlarge
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The Sunbathers, 1921
17 1/4 x 21 3/4 inches (28 1/2 x 32 inches framed)
Oil on canvas
Signed and dated lower right: W. Strang 21
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Biography Click Images to Enlarge
Scottish painter, draughtsman and printmaker, William
Strang, was born on February 13th, 1859 in Dumbarton. The son of a
shipbuilder, Strang briefly apprenticed in his father's trade before attending
the Slade School from 1876 to 1880. He
worked in a highly realistic fashion under Alphonse Legros and even assisted
Legros in the printmaking class, eventually working primarily as an etcher.
One of Britain's leading proponents of etching,
Strang's works included 150 portraits of leading artistic and literary figures and
others, which demonstrated his strong socialist leanings. Inspired by the works of the
Venetian masters, Strang began to work with oils. From 1899 to 1901, he
painted ten large canvases on the theme of Adam and Eve, thus establishing his
reputation as a painter. Strang's earlier etchings, though they featured traditional landscapes and rustic subjects, often elicited a grim and
mysterious element that influenced some of his paintings as well. These
paintings, lauded as his best, were completed in the latter part of his life.
The Sunbathers,
painted in the year of Strang's death, beautifully demonstrates "the influence of the Belgian and French Symbolists' work
and the artist's growing confidence in the handling of color combined in his
mature style with linear clarity and schematic coloring."¹
Such expert manipulation of fluidity between shape and color renders the
lounging female figures of this scene as organic as the landscape itself. Comparable
to Gauguin's Tahitian Women on a Beach, 1891, the painting is reminiscent
of Gauguin's bold integration of impressionist techniques and Primitivist
interpretations of the female form. Strang also appropriates a sense of reverie in this idyllic display, a nod to the nostalgic nudes painted by his contemporary, Pierre Puvis de Chevannes, such as in Women on the Beach, 1879. The Sunbathers is exemplary of Strang's
most evolved work.
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Pictured Left to Right: Paul Gauguin, Tahitian Women on a Beach, 1891; Pierre Puvis de Chevannes, Women on the Beach, 1879; William Strang, The Sunbathers, 1921
One of the original members of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers,
Strang first exhibited there in 1881. He retired from the society in 1902,
protesting its exhibition of etched or engraved reproductions of pictures. He primarily exhibited at the Royal
Academy, the Society of
Twelve, and the International Society, to which he was elected in 1905. Strang
was also an elected associate engraver of the Royal Academy
in 1906. He was a prominent member of the International Society of Sculptors,
Painters and Gravers, becoming president himself in 1918. He died in Bournemouth on 12 April 1921, aged 62.
¹ Jane
Turner, ed. The
Dictionary of Art (New York, NY:
Oxford, 1996) p.746.
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Click Image to Enlarge
The painting is in excellent condition and is mounted in fine period reproduction frame (28 1/2 x 32 inches).
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