Tobias Stranover

1684 – 1731

A Still Life of Peaches, Apricots, a Melon, Grapes, Red Currants and Nuts with a Yellow-Crested Amazonian Parrot in a Landscape

Medium:

Oil on Canvas

Category:

Bird and Animal

Dimensions:

77(h) x 60(w) cms

Signed:

Signed: "T Stranover"

Exhibitions:

Essay:

Tobias Stranover was one of the leading emigré decorative painters working in England in the early part of the eighteenth century. Together with Jacob Bogdani, he was one of the major artists specialising in the painting of exotic birds and wild life.

His work brought a lightness and exoticism to English still-life and animal paintings which were missing in the early English works of Marmaduke Craddock and Francis Barlow. Stranover was born in Sibu, now in Czechoslovakia, and travelled to England, Hamburg and Dresden. Although examples of his work can be found in the museums of Hamburg, Dresden and Budapest, his work is most commonly found in old English collections.

His extensive knowledge of the different fruits and birds of the world can be seen in his paintings and his later works become more detailed and much fuller. He is last recorded in 1731, when he was paid 10 gns. for a "fowl piece with a peacock in it" (Lord Fitzwalter's accounts, now in the Hampshire Record Office).

Tobias Stranover married Jacob Bogdani's daughter and it is thought that both artists collaborated occasionally.

Provenance:

Private Collection, Germany