The Many Lives of Johann Zoffany

Join Dr Eugene Barilo Von Reisberg for a lecture exploring the many lives of Bohemian artist, Johann Zoffany (1733-1810). Johann Zoffany is best known today for his skilful arrangements of multifigure compositions which had popularised the genre of ‘conversation pieces’ in British portrait painting. In his works, the society of the second half of the eighteenth century comes alive with intimate glimpses into the atmosphere, lifestyles, and pastimes of the royal family, aristocracy, gentry, as well as leading theatre performers of the day, with humour, satire, and in-jokes. His wanderlust took him from England to southern Europe and then across to India, where rumours of shipwrecks, cannibalism, and bigamy abound. The author of The Academicians of the Royal Academy, The Tribuna of the Uffizi, and Colonel Mordaunt’s Cock Match, Zoffany was certainly one of the more colourful figures of the eighteenth-century art scene.