45. William Strang
(1859-1921)
The Cause of the Poor

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Strang, The Cause of the Poor

The Cause of the Poor

Etching and drypoint, 1890, 223 x 200 mm., Binyon 151 only state, edition of 60. Exceedingly fine impression on simili-japon with full margins, signed in pencil. Strang was an artist – painter, draughtsman, etcher, book illustrator – who did not change much throughout his life, but who espoused a number of different styles, moving from one to another and back again. Thus, there is considerable variety in his work. He was strongly influenced by literature, was a fine portraitist, and he had a certain macabre sense, but perhaps his best prints are those in which he takes a social grouping and gives us a virtual psychological study of each of the individuals. The faces, the physical attitudes convey here feelings, attitudes and personalities that could have been conveyed by a Charles Dickens – in several thousand words. The dour Strang is never sentimental (in the modern sense), but there is sensibility here of a high order. A rarely seen print.