The Yale Center for British Art has set out to rehabilitate the reputation of Johann Zoffany, a German expatriate who became a member of the Royal Academy by appointment of King George III. One might argue that he isn’t better-known for fair reasons. His work is present in few American collections, he altered the spelling of his name several times, and his peripatetic life bewildered later chroniclers of English painting. His contemporaries included Thomas Gainsborough and William Hogarth, and, although he was an able painter with a gift for the theatrical, he had neither the deft wrist of the former nor the piercing eye of the latter. Yet within the parameters of genre scenes and group portraiture, he produced dozens of striking, original works. His portraits of single figures, if they don’t always rank as masterpieces, are full of puckish verve that makes up for many of their shortcomings.
Born Johannes Joesphus Zauffaly near Frankfurt in 1733, he was introduced into courtly life by his father, a cabinetmaker in the employ of Prince Alexander Ferdinand von Thurn und Taxis. He studied in Regensburg under Martin Speer, who had trained in Italy, and, at the age of seventeen, the young painter journeyed to Rome on foot. Italy received him warmly. He attached to the studio of Agostino Masucci, who had taken in the Scottish painter Gavin Hamilton, and it’s probable that he crossed paths with young Englishmen who would figure in the future of British art, most notably Joshua