Strange, SIR ROBERT, engraver, was born at Kirkwall, in Orkney, on 14th July 1721. He had tried sailing and a law-clerkship with an elder half-brother in Edinburgh, when in 1735 he was apprenticed for six years to an English engraver there, Richard Cooper. His apprenticeship ended, he fell in love with a young Jacobite lady, Isabella Lumisdene, and for her sake in 1745 espoused the cause of Prince Charles Edward, engraving not only his portrait but his bank-notes, and enlisting as a private in the prince's life-guards. He fought at Cluoden, escaped his pursuers by hiding beneath his sweetheart's ample-hooped gown, in 1747 married her, and next year repaired to Rouen and thence to Paris, and studied under Descamps and Lebas. In 1750 he returned to Britain, and settling in London soon attained the very highest rank in his profession. On a second visit to the Continent (1760-65), to execute engravings after the old masters, his eminence was recognised by the academies of Paris, Rome, Florence, Bologna, and Parma, which all conferred on him the honour of membership; and subsequently, in 1787, he was knighted, having made peace with the reigning house by engraving West's picture of the apotheosis of George III.'s children, Octavius and Alfred. He died a wealthy man on 5th July 1792, his wife surviving him by fourteen years.
See Dennistoun's Memoirs of Sir Robert Strange (2 vols. 1855); the Life by the Rev. F. Woodward prefixed to Twenty Masterpieces of Strange (1874); and also the Introduction to Marshal Keith's Memoir (Spalding Club, 1843).