Robert Strange

Sir Robert Strange (14 July 1721 – 5 July 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. Early life 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 a 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. Voluntary exile 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-Nicolas Le Cat, 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.