In range, skill, and accomplishment, Zoffany ranks with Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hogarth, and Joseph Wright of Derby in the annals of 18th-century British art.
But being German-born, peripatetic, and somewhat mercurial, Zoffany (1733-1810) has never quite qualified for inclusion in the British pantheon - never mind that he was a court painter to George III, a founding member of the Royal Academy, and esteemed by all his peers.
This exhibition aims to put things straight. Organized by Martin Postle of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, with assistance from Gillian Forrester, a curator of prints and drawings there, the show seeks to retire the idea that Zoffany was a mere painter of detail and notable only as “a rich visual resource for historical data,’’ Postle writes.
That idea dies, as far as I’m concerned, as soon as you look at the pictures, which are - in spite of moments of stiffness and laboring contrivance - fresh in color, lively in composition, wittily conceived, and suavely executed.
That said, it’s true that the paintings are, also, full of detail - or, as I prefer to think of it, character. Inevitably, they make you curious about a figure whose memoirs one longs to read and put on the shelf beside Casanova’s.
Like Casanova (if not on quite the same scale), Zoffany was amorous, in that charming but heedless manner the 18th century did so much to promote. He was dogged by rumors of bigamy when it came to light that his first wife, who had returned alone to Germany less than a year after they moved to England, was still married to him, even as he presented his mistress, Mary Thomas, as “Mrs. Zoffany’’ in English society.
A portrait of Mary, painted by Zoffany as the rumors reached a crescendo, shows her hands languidly crossed on her lap, a wedding ring conspicuously on show. She’s attractive and very alive. She gazes off to the right with a look of large-eyed warning or rebuke.
