Description

Oil on canvas in giltwood frame, signed lower left.
A fine marine painting by Stranover depicting a squadron of English warships off a Continental port.
In the background can be seen a beached vessel being careened and, judging by the smoke, re-tarred.
The artist captures the beauty of the heavily gunned ship of the line as she heels with the shore wind, her stern carved with the elaborate gilt 'gingerbreading' fashionable around 1700.
These warships were the most powerful weapon on earth, with the fire power of an artillery regiment.
TOBIAS STRANOVER (Stranovius) (1684-1756) was a Transylvanian Saxon painter in England, born in Sibiu.
Stranover arrived in England in 1702 in the company of the English Ambassador to Constantinople, William Paget, who had met him in Transylvania. He studied painting under the mastership of his father-in-law in London. He worked in the Netherlands, Hamburg, Dresden and London.
Stranover did very well in England and it was said, soon after his arrival, that he "already excels amongst painters".
His speciality became still lives and flower paintings but this seascape, one of his earliest works, shows he was equally talented as a sea painter.
According to most references Stranover died 'after 1724' or 'after 1731', however, a letter from his brother-in-law mentions him alive in 1733 and on p.396 of the London Magazine of 1756 a laudatory poem dedicated to him mentions the exact date of his death: February 26, 1756.
SIZE:54 x 36 inches inc. frame.
PROVENANCE: Sir John Tomlinson Hibbert KCB (1824-1908) of Hampsfield, Lindale, nr. Grange over Sands.
Thence by descent through the family to the present day.
LITERATURE: E.H.H. Archibald 'Dictionary of Sea Painters'. Illustrated p.265, plate 134. (see Image 5).

Internal Ref: 8653