If ever an art history term was in need of a rebrand it’s “staffage”. Unsexy title, delightful subject. Staffage, or “fanciful figures”, as a charming small exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London has it, are the incidental figures in a landscape or architectural drawing that enliven the composition, lend a sense of scale and add a dash of colour to the scene. In a film, you’d call them extras. Staffage extends to animals. What would a ruin be without its stray dog? Or a pastoral landscape without its picturesque cows?
This is a model exhibition: small, focused, confident in the story it wants to tell. There’s an enjoyable Where’s Wally?-ish pleasure in spotting the staffagers taking a turn about a terrace, drawing
