Johan Zoffany, Zoffani or Zauffelij (13 March 1733 – 11 November 1810) was a German neoclassical

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

 painter, active mainly in England. His works appear in many prominent British national galleries such as the National Gallery, London

National Gallery, London

The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...

, the Tate Gallery

Tate Gallery

The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...

 and in the Royal Collection

Royal Collection

The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family. It is property of the monarch as sovereign, but is held in trust for her successors and the nation. It contains over 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolours and drawings, and about 150,000 old master prints, as well as historical...

.

Biography

Johan Zoffany was born Johannes Josephus Zaufallij in Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

 on 13 March 1733. He undertook an initial period of study in a sculptor's workshop in Ellwangen in the 1740s (possibly at the workshop of sculptor Melchior Paulus) and later at Regensburg with the artist Martin Speer. In 1750, he travelled to Rome, entering the studio of Agostino Masucci

Agostino Masucci

Agostino Masucci was an Italian painter of the late-Baroque or Rococo period.Born in Rome, he initially apprenticed with Andrea Procaccino, and then became a member of the studio of Carlo Maratta. He joined the Accademia di San Luca in 1724, and from 1736 to 1738, he was director or Principe...

. In autumn 1760 he arrived in England, initially finding work with the clockmaker Stephen Rimbault (Zoffany's fine portrait of whom is now in the Tate Gallery), painting vignettes for his clocks. By 1764 he was enjoying the patronage of the royal family, King George III and Queen Charlotte

Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was the Queen consort of the United Kingdom as the wife of King George III...

, for his charmingly informal scenes — such as Queen Charlotte and Her Two Eldest Children (1765), in which the queen is shown at her toilette, with her eldest children, inside Buckingham House, and another, outdoors, with her children and her brothers. He also was popular with the Austrian royal family, and in 1776 was created 'Baron' by the archduchess Maria Theresia.

Johann Zoffany was a Freemason and was initiated into the Craft on December 19, 1763 at The Old King's Lodge No 28.

Zoffany, a founder member of the new Royal Academy in 1769, enjoyed great popularity for his society and theatrical portraits, painting many prominent actors and actresses, in particular David Garrick

David Garrick

David Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...

, the most famous actor of his day – Garrick as Hamlet

Hamlet

The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

and Garrick as King Lear

King Lear

King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...

– often in costume. He was a master of what has been called the 'theatrical conversation piece', a sub-set of the 'conversation piece' genre that arose with the middle classes in the eighteenth century. (The conversation piece - or conversazione - was a relatively small—though not necessarily inexpensive—informal group portrait, often of a family group or a circle of friends. This genre developed in the Netherlands and France and became popular in Britain from about 1720.) Zoffany has been described by one critic as 'the real creator and master of this genre' and 'a thoroughly bad painter' simultaneously which rather denigrates this genre.

In the latter part of his life, Zoffany was especially noted for producing huge paintings with large casts of people and objets d'art, all readily recognizable to their contemporaries. In paintings like "The Tribuna of the Uffizi" he carried this fidelity to an extreme degree: the Tribuna

Tribuna of the Uffizi

The Tribuna of the Uffizi is an octagonal room in the Uffizi gallery, Florence, Italy. Designed by Bernardo Buontalenti for Francesco I de' Medici in the late 1580s, the most important antiquities and High Renaissance and Bolognese paintings from the Medici collection were and still are displayed...

 was already displayed in the typically cluttered 18th-century manner (i.e., with many objects hanging in a small area, stacked many paintings high on the wall), but Zoffany added to the sense of clutter by having other works brought in to the small octagonal gallery space from other parts of the Uffizi

Uffizi

The Uffizi Gallery , is a museum in Florence, Italy. It is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world.-History:...

.

Though Zoffany made several visits to Europe and India during his lifetime he remained in Britain, dying at his home at Strand-on-the-Green

Strand-on-the-Green

Strand-on-the-Green is an area of Chiswick in west London.-Location and description:Strand-on-the-Green is located immediately to the east of Kew Bridge, along the north bank of the river Thames...

, 11 November 1810. He is buried in the churchyard of St Anne's Church, Kew. The painter Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough

Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Suffolk:Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let...

 was, by that artist's own request, later buried nearby.

In popular culture

In the comic opera

Comic opera

Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...

 The Pirates of Penzance

The Pirates of Penzance

The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...

, by Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...

, the Major-General in his eponymous song

Major-General's Song

I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General is a patter song from Gilbert and Sullivan's 1879 comic opera The Pirates of Penzance. It is perhaps the most famous song in Gilbert and Sullivan's operas. It is sung by Major-General Stanley at his first entrance, towards the end of Act I...

 of being able to distinguish works by Raphael

Raphael

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...

 from works by Gerard Dou

Gerard Dou

Gerrit Dou , also known as Gerard and Douw or Dow, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, whose small, highly-polished paintings are typical of the Leiden fijnschilders...

 and Zoffany.

"The Frankfurt-born Zoffany (1734-1810) lived in Lucknow for two and a half years, staying much of the time with Claude Martin

Claude Martin

Major General Claude Martin was an officer in the French, and later the British, army in India. He rose to the position of Major General in the British East India Company...

. One of the paintings was Colonel Mordant's Cock Fight which included, Martin, Ozias Humphrey

Ozias Humphrey

Ozias Humphry was a leading English painter of portrait miniatures, later oils and pastels, of the 18th century. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1791, and in 1792 he was appointed Portrait Painter in Crayons to the King Ozias Humphry (or Humphrey) (8 September 1742 – 9 March 1810)...

 and Zoffany himself. On his way back to England (where he had settled in the 1750s) he was shipwrecked off the Andaman Islands

Andaman Islands

The Andaman Islands are a group of Indian Ocean archipelagic islands in the Bay of Bengal between India to the west, and Burma , to the north and east...

. Lots having been drawn among the starving survivors, a young sailor was duly eaten. Zoffany may thus be said with some confidence to have been the first and last Royal Academician to become a cannibal.".

Books about

Despite the high profile the artist enjoyed in his day, as court painter in London and Vienna, Zoffany has, until very recently, been curiously overlooked by art historical literature. In 1920 Lady Victoria Manners and Dr. G. C. Williamson published John Zoffany, R. A., his life and works. 1735-1810 – the first in-depth study of the artist and his work, privately printed, presumably at some cost (with 330pp, numerous black/white and a few colour plates), in a limited edition of 500 copies.

In 1966 Oliver Millar published Zoffany and his Tribuna - the expanded and illustrated notes of a lecture given at the Courtauld in 1964, on Zoffany's celebrated Uffizi group-portrait now in the Royal Collection. (London : Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966.)

This was followed by Johan Zoffany, 1733–1810, Mary Webster's short but authoritative illustrated guide for the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London (14 January to 27 March 1977).

In December 2009, the first full biography was published, Johan Zoffany: Artist and Adventurer by Penelope Treadwell (Paul Holberton Publishing). This meticulously researched biography traces Zoffany's footsteps, from his youth in Germany, through his first years in London – working for clockmaker Stephen Rimbault – to his growing success as society and theatrical portraitist and founder-member of the Royal Academy, and following him on his Grand Tour and sojourn in India. Illustrated in full colour with more than 250 works by Zoffany and his peers, many of which are in private collections, Treadwell's biography provides a timely reassessment of the artist's life and work.

External links