Takács Imre – Buzási Enikő – Jávor Anna – Mikó Árpád szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve, Művészettörténeti tanulmányok Mojzer Miklós hatvanadik születésnapjára (MNG Budapest, 1991)

RAJNAI, Miklós: Tobias Stranover 1684-1756

least on those points which are not contradicted by known facts. Especially because even when they are, they sometimes seem to reveal or promise a nugget of truth wrapped in the jumbled retelling of far off events heard about a long time ago. The major startling revelation is that Stranover was the son of Bogdani's sister, called Susanna Benigna, who before her marriage lived with their widowed mother on a Bogdáni estate in Bohemia.

31 Consequently Stranover was not only the son-in-law of Jacob Bogdani but his nephew as well. If this is true, and it is repeated often enough by Mrs Gordon, the widow Johanna, whom Jeremias the elder married in 1675, must have died, and Jeremias remarried. The rest of the story in a nutshell: after the marriage Bogdani's sister and mother left Bohemia and returned to live in Szeben; Stranover went to university (perhaps college is meant) in "Cloussenburg"

32 to study "ancient and modern languages, mathematics, history, philosophy, and every branch of polite literature"; he finished university at the age of sixteen; his father

33 died on the road when bringing him home

34

; four or five years later the mother died as well but not before making Tbbias promise to leave Transylvania

35 and his difficult brother (one year younger than him) after her death and settle down in England with the help of his uncle; he was received with an „air of coldness" by Bogdáni; because he and his travel companion, Count Betlehem (Bethlen?) received "neither encouragement nor assistance" from Bogdani they left England after two years; the Count joined Marlborough's Campaign, in which he died; Stranover intended to return to Transylvania but was delayed in Vienna because of the plague in Hungary, while waiting he learned about his brother's death and the confiscation of the Stranover properties; he decided „to return to England, there to settle near his only surviving relation from whom he hoped for protection, advice and assistance in his destitute situation." Was Mrs Gordon fusing here into a coherent account fragments of faintly remembered stories told in her family about events that occurred decades before she was born, and which partly concerned the life of Bogdáni whom she never knew, as he died a year before her birth? Was Count Betlehem in fact the young Mihály Bethlen who indeed visited England and Bogdáni, but ten years earlier than the writer implies and who did die young, but at home and not fighting in France, ten years after his safe return to Transylvania? Was Stranover's visit to Vienna in 1733, perhaps triggered by this brother's death in 1729, the source of the visit recounted by the writer as having taken place twenty-five years earlier? Mrs Gordon hardly says anything about Bogdáni being an artist and nothing whatsoever about her father, Stranover, being one. Surprisingly there is no mention of him in the copious notes of his exact contemporary George Vertue, who was apparently acquainted with Bogdani and who diligently recorded everything he could collect concerning artists in England of his own and previous times. Four out of the six contemporary references to Stranover's artistic activities have already been taken account of: they could not be more laconic.

36 One of the remaining two is an intriguing bequest to him in Bogdani's will: "all my Modells I give to my said son William Bogdáni and to my said son in law Tbbias Stranovius and his Wife and I will that the same may be divided between them by Lots and not be publicly disposed of that is to say one half part to my said son William and the other half to my said son in Law - Stranovius and his Wife ..." Whether the "Modells" were stuffed birds as Országh suggests tentatively

37 or painted studies as is the conviction of the present writer,

38 it is surely a safe assumption that they were aids to assist their painting, Bogdáni probably still expecting that William would follow in his footsteps. Lastly we know one example of the kind of prices he charged: on 21st Jury 1731 he was paid ten guineas for "a fowel piece with a Peacock in it".

40 Without knowing the size, this is not as informative as it could be. All the evidence we have so far points towards Stranover's early settling in England and consequently getting his artistic education, perhaps even his first employment, as a studio assistant from Bogdani. If the latter ran a workshop, which is very likely, he would follow the time honoured practice and would utilize as labour members of his family; first Stranover and later William as well. Working together on commissions would have steeped the young man in the methods and techniques of his master which in turn would easily explain the Bogdáni stamp on many of his paintings, especially when he was able to make free use of Bogdani's "Modells" for his own pictures 41 In quality his work ranges from the impressive standard of the upright painting with a peacock

42 which would not be amiss in Bogdani's oeuvre (ill. 3.), through modest restating of themes done better by his master (ill. 1-2), to pictures which are awkward in composition, almost primitive in the indication of recession and not at all blameless in drawing. It is true of course that his name is apparently used as a convenient receptacle for paintings which are more or less Bogdani-like, but not as good as one would expect if they were by that artist. If William painted in the style of his father as Walpole afhrms,

43 his pictures too, not one of which has yet come to light, could well hide behind Strannover rather than Bogdani attributions. This does not mean that Stranover should not take some of the blame himself. As early as 1762 he is severely censured by that discerning critic of painting, Hagedorn: "If you scatter the grapes you obtain shapes without coherence, such as a painting by Stranover, where every figure in an evenly dissipated glitter screams at you and demands first attention. This is harsh judgement indeed which the author ameliorates immediately by adding that England must have opened Stranover's eyes otherwise his pictures would not have found their way into such collections as Richard Mead's.

45 Among his idiosyncracies are: rather glassy grapes, a strange horizontal elongation of birds (ill. 5,1.) avenues fast plunging into the distance (ill. 6.). These