Johan Zoffany, 1733-1810
By: Mary Webster
Contributors: Zoffany, Johann, 1733-1810
Publisher: Yale University Press; Paul Mellon Centre BA
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New Haven [Conn.]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 708
ISBN-13: 9780300162783
Subjects: Painters; Criticism and interpretation; Biography
Description: Universally recognised as a brilliant and gifted eighteenth-century artist, Zoffany was regarded by Horace Walpole as one of the three greatest painters in England, along with his friends Reynolds and Gainsborough. He has remained without a detailed study of his life and works owing to the fascinating and complex vicissitudes of his career, now established from widely scattered sources. Starting out as a late-baroque painter at a German princely court, he moved to London in 1760 and soon became a leading portraitist. A loyal patron was the great actor David Garrick through whom Zoffany became admired as the unrivalled interpreter of the Georgian stage. The delightful inventions of his conversation pieces proved, then as now, fashionably successful images of private lives and led to his swift rise into the royal patronage of George III and Queen Charlotte. Zoffany set foot in so many worlds that their contrast alone gives a constantly changing interest to the history of his life and work.
Notes: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 653-683) and indexes.