Two Sketches of David Garrick as Abel Drugger in 'The Alchymist'

Two Sketches of David Garrick as Abel Drugger in The Alchymist from around 1772 captures the greatest actor of the Georgian stage in one of his most acclaimed character roles. Ben Jonson's Abel Drugger, the gullible tobacconist of The Alchemist, was considered Garrick's finest comic creation, and Zoffany's multiple studies of the role document the expressive range that made Garrick's transformation into this character so remarkable to contemporaries. Zoffany's oil technique achieved exceptional textural fidelity in the rendering of fabrics and the precise observation of expression and gesture that distinguished his theatrical portraits. The sketch format reveals Zoffany's working process more directly than his finished canvases, capturing the spontaneity of his response to Garrick's performance while preserving specific details of costume and expression with documentary precision. The Ashmolean Museum holds this work within a collection that includes important examples of British painting and drawing from the Georgian period, recognizing Zoffany's theatrical portraits as a significant contribution to the visual culture of the London stage.

The sketch format captures Garrick's expressive characterization with a spontaneity that reveals Zoffany's working process, less finished than his exhibited theatrical portraits but equally revealing.