Johann Zoffany, 'Mrs Oswald', about 1763-4

Mrs Oswald

Johann Zoffany

Room 34

About the work

Overview

Zoffany has portrayed Mary Oswald at the age of about 50. Probably born in Kingston, Jamaica, she was the only child of Alexander Ramsay, a Glasgow-born merchant who settled in Jamaica, acquiring plantations there and in the South American colonies. In 1750, she married Richard Oswald, a Scottish entrepreneur, merchant, shipowner and slave trader who provided army supplies.

This portrait is one of Zoffany’s largest paintings and was probably commissioned to hang in the Oswald’s stately home of Auchincruive, three miles from Ayr in Scotland. Mrs Oswald’s costume and hairstyle suggest a date in the early 1760s. It was unusual for Zoffany to portray a female sitter on her own. He appears to have detected little zest for life in Mrs Oswald, and her pose in the wild natural setting seems only to emphasise her solitude.

In-depth

Zoffany has portrayed Mary Oswald (about 1713–1788) at the age of about 50. Probably born in Kingston, Jamaica, she was the only child of Alexander Ramsay, a Glasgow-born merchant who settled in Jamaica, acquiring plantations there and in the South American colonies. Mary not only succeeded to her father’s estates, but also to those of her two uncles. She was very wealthy and much of that wealth was gained through slavery.

In November 1750, Mary Ramsay married Richard Oswald, a Scottish entrepreneur, merchant, shipowner and slave trader. Oswald also negotiated the peace treaty with Benjamin Franklin that concluded the War of American Independence, during which Oswald had operated as an army supplies contractor.

This portrait is one of Zoffany’s largest paintings and was probably commissioned to hang in the Oswald’s Scottish house designed by the architect Robert Adam, on their estate of Auchincruive, three miles from Ayr. Oswald collected paintings and decorated his Scottish home with them. After his death, Mrs Oswald requested that the pictures displayed at Auchincruive should stay there, and this portrait by Zoffany remained in the house until 1922.

Mrs Oswald was almost certainly painted in Zoffany’s Covent Garden studio. Perhaps she was surprised on seeing the finished picture to find she was sitting on a boulder with a large slanting tree trunk beside her. She does not seem at ease in this wild setting. She wears a ribboned cap and lustrous blue taffeta dress with ruches, bows and wide lace sleeve ruffles and a lace ‘modesty piece’ above her neckline to protect her fashionably pale skin from the sun. She carries a flat straw hat over her arm, the same one that appears in Zoffany’s portrait of David Garrick and his Wife by his Temple to Shakespeare at Hampton (Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven). The hat clearly did not belong to Mrs Oswald but came from Zoffany’s props box.

Zoffany appears to have detected little zest for life in Mrs Oswald and her pose and setting seem only to emphasise her solitude. There is a tradition that a portrait of Mr Oswald, who died in 1784, at about the time this portrait was painted, ‘exists behind a cloud’ in the picture. X-ray photographs show what was possibly a large male head sculpted as part of an urn in the top right area, later painted over with foliage. The male head is too large to have formed part of this composition and may be the remains of an earlier abandoned work.

The Scottish national poet, Robert Burns, who was Ayrshire born and bred, wrote that although he had not known Mrs Oswald personally, ‘I spent my early years in her neighbourhood, and among her servants and tenants I know that she was detested with the most heart-felt cordiality.’ In a very nasty ode to her memory, which was published in the Morning Star on 7 May 1789, he wrote: ‘View the weathered beldam’s face / Can thy keen inspection trace / Aught of humanity’s sweet melting grace?’ We must wonder whether Burns ever saw Zoffany’s portrait of Mrs Oswald.

Key facts

Details

Full title: Mrs Oswald
Artist: Johann Zoffany
Artist dates: 1733? - 1810
Date made: about 1763-4
Medium and support: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 226.5 × 158.8 cm
Acquisition credit: Bought, 1938
Inventory number: NG4931
Location: Room 34
Collection: Main Collection
Subjects: Mary Oswald
Frame: 18th-century English Frame (original frame)

Provenance

Presumably commissioned by Richard Oswald (d. 1784). the sitter’s husband, for Auchincruive, his Ayrshire house; after the sitter’s death in 1788, passed with Auchincruive and its contents to his nephew and heir, George Oswald, and thence by descent to Richard Alexander Oswald of Auchincruive (d. 1921), by whose executors sold Sotheby’s 14 June 1922 (106), bt Leggatt Brothers for Lord Lee of Fareham, from whom purchased by the National Gallery 1938.

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Judy Egerton, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The British Paintings’, London 2000; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2011

Johan Zoffany RA: Society Observed

Yale Center for British Art

27 October 2011 - 12 February 2012

Bibliography

1761

Edinburgh, Scottish Record Office, GD 223/52-3: Letters from Mrs Oswald to her Husband in Germany etc., 1761-63, in letter books coll. Major R. A. Oswald, 1761 - 1763
1788

R.S. Shaw, A Tour in 1787 from London to the Western Highlands of Scotland … With Minute Descriptions of the Principal Seats, Castles, Ruins, Etc, London 1788
1788

'Obituary of Mrs Oswald in Deaths', Gentleman's Magazine, LVIII, 1788
1789

R. Burns, 'Ode, Sacred to the Memory of Mrs Oswald, of Auchencruive', Morning Star, 1789
1920

V. Manners and G.C. Williamson, John Zoffany Ra: His Life and Work, 1735-1810, London 1920
1923

T. Borenius, A Catalogue of the Pictures, etc. at 18 Kensington Palace Gardens, London, 1923: Collected by Viscount and Viscountess Lee of Fareham, 2 vols, Oxford 1923
1946

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: British School, London 1946
1946

M. Davies, Paintings and Drawings on the Backs of National Gallery Pictures, London 1946
1952

L.G. Pine (ed.), Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, 17th edn, London 1952
1959

Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: British School, 2nd edn (revised), London 1959
1974

A. Rowan, 'Robert Adam's Last Castles', Country Life, 1974
1977

W.L. Spiers, Catalogue of the Drawings and Designs of Robert and James Adam in Sir John Soane's Museum, Cambridge 1977
1977

M. Webster, Johann Zoffany, 1733-1810 (exh. cat. National Portrait Gallery, 14 January - 27 March 1977), London 1977
1989

J.J. Luna, Pintura britanica 1500-1820, Madrid 1989
1995

R. White and J. Pilc, 'Analyses of Paint Media', National Gallery Technical Bulletin, XVI, 1995, pp. 85-95
1998

J. Egerton, The British School, London 1998
2000

Egerton, Judy, National Gallery Catalogues: The British Paintings, revised edn, London 2000
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

Images

More works by Johann Zoffany

The Sharp Family