Robert Strange (engraver)

Sir Robert Strange (1721–1792) was a Scottish engraver. A Jacobite, he spent periods out of Great Britain, but was eventually reconciled to the Hanoverian succession and was knighted by George III.

The eldest son of David Strang of Kirkwall in Orkney, by his second wife Jean, daughter of Malcolm Scollay of Hunton, he was born at Kirkwall on 14 July 1721. He entered the office of an elder brother, a lawyer in Edinburgh. He then was apprenticed to Richard Cooper, the elder, an engraver, for six years.

Strange fought in the rising of 1745. While with the army at Inverness, he engraved a plate for the bank-notes of the planned Stuart government. He was at the battles of Prestonpans and Falkirk Muir in the Young Pretender's lifeguards; and was in hiding for some months after the Battle of Culloden.

After the amnesty Strange went to London and, carrying with him the Prince's seal, which had been left behind in Scotland, to Rouen, a centre of exiled Jacobites. There he studied anatomy under Claude-Nicholas Lecat, and drawing under Jean-Baptiste Descamps. In 1749 he moved to Paris and placed himself under the engraver Jacques-Philippe Le Bas. There he learned drypoint and returned in 1750 to London.

After a period of dealing in prints and working in London as engraver, Strange fell out with potential patrons at court, including Lord Bute. Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha wished an engraving to be made of a portrait of Frederick, Prince of Wales, her late husband, by Allan Ramsay, and one of Bute. Strange found the price too low, and refused the commission via William Chambers; it was taken up in 1758 by William Wynne Ryland who rose in royal favour under George III.

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