Tobias Stranover

TOBIAS STRANOVER Szeben (Hermannstadt), Transylvania 1684 - 1756 Bath Tobias Stranover was the son of the Hungarian-born religious and portrait painter Jeremias Stranover the Elder (d.1702), who spent the greater part of his career in Szeben (Hermannstadt; today in Romania). Tobias’s brother Jeremias the Younger (d.1729) was also a painter. Probably trained by his father, Stranover worked in Szeben, Holland, Hamburg and Dresden. He is said to have come to London in 1703 in the entourage of William Paget, English ambassador extraordinary to the Ottoman Porte. In London Stranover spent time in the studio of his uncle, the Hungarian flower and bird painter Jacob Bogdani (c.1660-1724), whose daughter Elizabeth he married around 1720. Like his father-in-law, Stranover specialized in rich-toned, decorative still life and bird paintings, frequently borrowing motifs from Bogdani. Tobias Stranover and his wife lived near Bogdani in the Covent Garden area of London. In 1724 he was a beneficiary in Bogdani’s will of part of his father-in-law’s considerable fortune and studio contents. Among Stranover’s London patrons was Dr Richard Mead, the famous collector and physician who treated Watteau for tuberculosis. In 1733 he travelled to Vienna and Germany, and seems on this occasion to have received commissions for four large Still lifes with animals and fruit for the Garden Room of Schloss Ahrensburg near Hamburg. Stranover’s latest dated painting was made in 1731 and he spent his latter years in Kingsmead Square, Bath. The work of Tobias Stranover is represented in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest; the Kunsthalle, Hamburg and the Landesmuseum, Schwerin. See: Miklos Rajnai, ‘Tobias Stranover 1684-1756’, Annales de la Galerie Nationale Hongroise/A Magyar Nemzeti Galleria Evkonyve (Budapest 1991), pp.175-178, illustrated.