William Strang RA (1859 - 1921)

RA Collection: People and Organisations

Scottish painter and printmaker, born 13 February 1859, in Dumbarton. Following a brief apprenticeship with a shipbuilding firm in Clydesdale, he entered the Slade School of Art in 1876 under Alphonse Legros. After completing his studies at the Slade in 1880 he 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, pastoral themes and macabre genre subjects. He also etched 150 portraits of leading artistic and literary figures. Works include Death of the Ploughman’s Wife (1888); The Socialists (1891); The Ancient Mariner (1896) and Don Quixote (1902).

Strang exhibited at the RA from 1892 until 1922 (in which year his RA Diploma Work, a line engraving portrait of Campbell Dodgson (1867–1948), (Keeper of Prints & Drawings at the British Museum in 1912–32), was posthumously displayed). Strang was elected ARA in 1906 (as an engraver), and RA in 1921. He became a member of the Art-Workers’ Guild in 1895 and was president of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers in 1918.

In 1885, William Strang married Agnes McSymon Rogerson (d. 1933), also from Dumbarton. They had four sons and one daughter. Their sons Ian Strang (1886–1952) and David Strang (1887–1967) were also printmakers.