Thomas Hardy, by William Strang, R.A.

Portrait of Thomas Hardy

William Strang (1859-1921)

1893

Oil on panel

17 in. x 15 in. (432 mm x 381 mm)

Bequeathed by Hardy's widow Florence in 1938

William Strang's first and best-known portrait of the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy is much more flattering than his other portraits of him, but still catches the sitter's sombre mood. The reflective downward look is perfect for this. [Commentary continues below. Click on the image to enlarge it and mouse over the text for links.]

Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery

Strang greatly admired Whistler, writing in his collaborative book on etching, "How entirely novel is his style, how expressive the bit of line with which he operates, how pre-eminently suggestive" (Singer and Strang 161-62), and it was Whistler's influence that made him turn more towards painting in the 1890s. The portrait is in a "small-scale reeded 'Whistler' cushion frame of a type still being used by Whistler in the 1890s" ("Thomas Hardy"). After this portrait, Hardy would sit for others, not only by Strang but by other well-known artists, including Augustus John, in which he is gradually transformed from a "middle-aged and then elderly figure" to the "grand old man of Max Gate, venerable and wise" (see Pite 327-28).

In Strang's own last oil-painting of him, though, from 1920, the same downward look is set off by pastel and deeper colours in the background, evidently representing the Wessex countryside, and has a red-roofed house peeping out near the upper left-hand corner, no doubt Max Gate. This seems to be the Hardy of the beautiful poem, "After a Journey": "nay, bring me here again! / I am just the same as when / Our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers." – Jacqueline Banerjee

Related Material

References

Pite, Ralph. Thomas Hardy: The Guarded Life. New Haven: Yale university Press, 2007.

Singer, Hans Wolfgang, and William Strang. Etching, Engraving and the Other Methods of Printing Pictures. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1897. Internet Archive. Contributed by Harvard University. Web. 7 March 2015.

"Thomas Hardy." National Portrait Gallery. Web. 7 March 2015.

Created 7 March 2015