JohanZoffany,portraitpainterofhighsociety

JohanZoffany,portraitpainterofhighsociety Can the German artist Johan Zoffany pack out an exhibition? This is the question on the mind of the Royal Academy this spring. He was born Johannes Josephus Zauffaly near Frankfurt in 1733, the son of a Catholic cabinet-maker attached to the court of Prince Alexander Ferdinand von Thurn und Taxis. Growing up at court, the young Zauffaly absorbed both a classical education along with the manners of a courtier. He trained under the painter Martin Speer in Regensburg. He may never be promoted to art's first division, but ultimately, it is the fact that he was always an outsider which makes his legacy so fascinating. Success at court did not exhaust Zoffany's energy, curiosity and wanderlust. His status ranked above that of the musician and actor, but even among artists there was a pecking order, with history painters outranking portraitists and flower painters and decorators. Zoffany was hampered by his indefinite marital status – separated but not divorced. He could not marry up to secure position (as did his Scottish contemporary Allan Ramsay). Although lanky and pock-marked, Zoffany was charismatic, self-possessed, shrewd and observant. But a hidebound and peripheral court was an anti-climax after cosmopolitan Rome. Though he married an innkeeper's daughter from Wurzburg, the ambitious artist did not cool his fiery heels for long in Germany. Three years later he moved on to London – the metropolis of commercial modernity, the biggest city of western Europe. He sired several children with an Indian mistress, while his common-law wife languished in London. If ever there was an artist poised to grasp the cultural opportunities of global commerce then it was Zoffany. In his masterly group portrait of Lord Willoughby de Broke and His Family (1766), one naughty son is pulling on the tablecloth, while the little girl's skirt is held out of the way of the tea things by her affectionate mother. But patriarchy remains. Husbands were loving and caring, but still dominant. The Licensing Act of 1737 sought to control the political independence of the stage, by limiting licenses for new plays to two "patent theatres", Covent Garden and Drury Lane; Garrick presided over the latter. The first royal commission Queen Charlotte with Her Two Eldest Sons (1764-5) exhibits his virtuoso ability to paint silks and silver as much as relationships. "These things were as essential to Zoffany as the people he was painting, and to us they are perhapsmore important. He is the Jane Austen of English painting. "How laboriously and how lovingly he drew the tea pots and chimney pieces on the wall!" commented Christopher Hussey in one of the first reappraisals in 1930. Rome was the fantastic artistic cosmopolis, teeming with architects studying classical ruins, artists in training from all over Europe, as well as young British milordi picking up a smattering of taste and connoisseurship before they went home to inherit. It was the capstone of a gentleman's cultural education. Though he spoke only faltering English (Italian was his second language), Zoffany did not want for self-confidence. And he was not friendless. London was a gathering place of émigré artists: engravers, illustrators, painters and sculptors, as well as dancers, singers and musicians. " But it is precisely this meticulous rendition of physical detail that came under attack from Reynolds, the first president of the Royal Academy. In fact, Zoffany seemed to give equal weight to fashionable decorations as to faces. The father is the apex of the family, gesturing to one son, but standing closest to his heir – pulling a toy horse. By the age of 17, he was a youth of some pretension, setting off to walk to Rome. "He anticipates to roll in gold dust," reported fellow artist Paul Sandby. English theatre had a unique significance in European culture. Suitably polished, Zoffani returned to Germany in 1757 and achieved his first appointment as "court and cabinet painter" to the elector of Trier. JohanZoffany,portraitpainterofhighsociety Trade News selected by Local Linkup on 04/03/2012