Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Strang, William
STRANG, WILLIAM (1859–1921), painter and etcher, was born at Dumbarton 13 February 1859, the younger of the two sons of Peter Strang, builder, of Dumbarton, by his wife, Janet Denny. He was at school at Dumbarton Academy, but before he was seventeen he went up to London (1875) and entered the Slade School of Art. London was to be his home for the rest of his life. In 1875 Alphonse Legros [q.v.] became Slade professor of fine art at University College, London; his influence on Strang's art was deep and lasting. Under Legros, Strang took to etching, while not neglecting the painter's brush. It was as an etcher of imaginative compositions, in which homeliness and realism, sometimes with a grim or fantastic element, were subdued to fine design and severe drawing, that he first made a name. The illustrations to Death and the Ploughman's Wife (1888) and The Earth Fiend (1892), two ballads written by himself, and those to The Pilgrim's Progress (1885) contain some of the best of his earlier etchings. Among the numerous single plates the portraits are especially good, though these were to be surpassed as the artist acquired more confident mastery and a broader style, tending to exchange the use of acid for dry point or graver. The best of the later portraits are masterpieces of their kind. Among later sets of etchings are the illustrations to The Ancient Mariner (1896), Kipling's Short Stories (1900), and Don Quixote (1902). A catalogue of Strang's etched work, published in 1906, with supplements (1912 and 1923), contains small reproductions of all his plates, 747 altogether. During the latter part of his life he etched less and painted more. Much of his time was given also to portrait drawings, in style founded on the Holbein drawings at Windsor. Strang did a great number of these, including many of the most distinguished people of his time. He designed and cut one of the largest woodcuts ever made, ‘The Plough’. As a painter he experimented in many styles, but at his best was quite original. ‘Bank Holiday’ in the Tate Gallery, and the ‘Portrait of a Lady’ at Glasgow, are good examples of his clean, bright colour and rigorous drawing. The Tate Gallery also contains two self portraits and a landscape. The British Museum has 136 of the etchings.
Strang was elected A.R.A. in 1906, R.A. (as an engraver) in 1921, and president of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers in 1918. He was of middle height, strongly built. Direct in speech and combative in argument, he delighted in good company, talk, and fun. He often travelled on the Continent, and visited the United States. He made many portraits of himself, etched, drawn, and painted, including one in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. He married in 1885 Agnes M'Symon. daughter of David Rogerson, J.P., provost of Dumbarton, and had four sons and one daughter. He died of heart disease, at Bournemouth, 12 April 1921.
[Private information; personal knowledge.]