Studio: international art (81.1921)

THE PAINTINGS OF WILLIAM
STRANG, R.A. BY HERBERT FURST

WILLIAM STRANG is one of the
most interesting living representa-
tives of British Art; and perhaps in certain
respects the most interesting member of
the Royal Academy. His position there
is entirely anomalous: he had only
shown, as he says, a single etching at
Burlington House, and that as long ago
as 1883, when he was elected an Associate
engraver in 1905 ; and since that date
his principal exhibits have been paintings
in oil. Nevertheless, in this very year
1921, he is made an Engraver Member.
How account for this anomaly i 0 0
William Strang is an Artist, We are rather
apt to think that that term indicates not so
much a calling as a type of mind ; we
speak of an " artistic temperament " as
connoting a sort of long-haired confusion
and a propensity for talking through a
broad-brimmed hat. But if there is any
real difference between the artistic mind
and the rest of humanity it is only this
that the artist is concerned above all else
with expression. The others have only
one predominating craving, vis., to ac-
quire, to attract, to gain, to amass, in other
words to take in or unto themselves—
and to leave it at that. The artistic
minority resemble the others in all re-
spects save one : their constitutional in-
ability to take without and a corresponding
desire to give. The majority live by taking,
the minority by giving—it is their beati-
tude. But in all other respects they
resemble the rest of humanity, and con-
sequently number in their ranks men of
philosophic, scientific, poetic, prosaic,
clerkish, mechanical, commercial, di-
lettantish, methodical, disorderly, or any
and every other habit of mind. 0 0
To say of Strang, then, that he is an
Artist describes really and precisely what
he is : a mind primarily concerned with
expression. Our brain, however, would
seem to be organised on the card-index-
system principle, so that we cannot make
use of facts or ideas until they have been
properly indexed and " filed " in our book
of memory. Hence such a bald statement
immediately provokes the demand for a
" card," a label of some kind, and we are
LXXXI. No. 338.—May 1921

given to experience a feeling of annoyance
when such a thing is not readily forth-
coming. I am afraid Strang's work has
caused a good deal of annoyance to some
people on no other account. Strang is
not readily rubricised : he is neither an
Academicist nor a Classicist, nor a Roman-
ticist ; neither an Impressionist nor a
Post-Impressionist; he presents himself
indeed to the impatient or merely casual
observer in Protean illusiveness. Yet
Strang is not only a very solid and un-
evasive personality but a singularly simple
and ingenuous one to boot, 0 0
In the flesh he is a man of medium
height, with iron-gray hair and moustache,
a humorously enquiring scrutiny in his
steel-gray eyes, a strong Scotch burr in
his speech, and an aura of boyish eager-
ness and infectious enthusiasm about his
person. He was born in 1859 at Dum-
barton, as the son of a builder. Destined
for a business career he became a clerk
in the office of a Clyde Shipbuilder. Then
it occurred to him to run away to sea.
Having thus shown signs of an " artistic
temperament," as generally interpreted,
along with even less unshakeable evidence
of artistic talents he was, on his not long
delayed return (the adventure took him
no further than Greenock), allowed to go
to London and to join there that hot-bed
of Genius-culture: the Slade-School,
then under—incredible dictu it seems to-
day—Poynter. Strang had three months
of Sir Edward and six years of his suc-
cessor, the never acclimatised but in-
spiring artist and teacher, Monsieur
Alphonse Legros. Legros could speak
no English, Strang no French, and yet
Strang made extraordinary progress.
" Legros," he says, " was the greatest
teacher that ever lived, because he was the
greatest artist who ever taught." Within a
very short time Strang's remarkable talent
for drawing and his keen interest in crafts-
manship gained him promotion; he became
the Professor's assistant in the etching-class.

Then for many years Strang devoted
himself to etching, a branch of art in which
he has long held a position of unrivalled
excellence. Meantime he also painted,
but did not exhibit. He presently added
to his reputation by a long series of
notable portrait-drawings. 000

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