Auction Catalogue
Create new listGeorge III (1760-1820), Death of Sir ROBERT STRANGE, 1792, a large bronze medal by G.Z. Weber, bust right, hair tied behind, wearing loose cloak, rev. winged figure of Fame leans on altar, holding wreath and palm branch, FAMÆ ÆTERNÆ, 90mm (BHM 362; E 846; V & T 396; Woolf –; BDM –). Minor casting faults, but a choice late baroque medal, very fine and excessively rare (£600-800)
Robert Strange (1721-92) was born in the Orkneys, apprenticed to a writer in Edinburgh and later became an engraver. He joined the Jacobite army in 1745 as a Gentleman in Lord Elcho’s Troop of the Lifeguard and was present at the battles of Prestonpans, Falkirk and Culloden. Shortly before the last, Prince Charles Edward Stuart commissioned him to produce two plates for the printing of paper money of necessity. One was afterwards found abandoned in a bog 40 miles south of the battlefield and handed to Cluny Macpherson: it is now in the West Highland Museum, Fort William (see Woolf, pp.101-2). The cartouche design is so similar to that of the medal (or pass?) for the Jacobite meeting of 1750 (Woolf 63:1) as to suggest that this was by his hand also. Strange produced several portraits of the Prince and the extremely rare oval portrait badges (Woolf 49:1) are believed to have been copied from one of them. Strange managed to escape from the battlefield of Culloden, made his way to Paris and spent much time at the Louvre, where he made engravings of several of the pictures. Neither the subject of Attainder nor the Act of Grace, he felt his position uncertain but, after several visits during which he exhibited at the Society of Arts, he returned to England in 1780.
Among his most accomplished works was his copy of a family group of Queen Henrietta Maria, printed in 1784. He presented special proofs to George III and members of his family and followed up with proof engravings of West’s Apotheosis of the Royal Children in December 1787, following which he was promptly knighted. Fellows of the Royal Academy of Arts of London, who had refused to admit engravers on the foundation of the Academy in 1768, were not pleased and suggested his next work should be of the Battle of Culloden.
Illustration reduced
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