Zoffany, Johann - The Bradshaw Family - art postcard

• Art Postcard

   

• Work of art title: The Bradshaw Family, exh 1769
• Artist (if known): Johann Zoffany
• Media or other details:  oil on canvas
• Publisher / Gallery: Tate Gallery, London
• Postally used:  no
• Stamp & postmark details (if relevant): n/a
• Size: Modern
• Notes & condition details:

NOTES:

Size: 'Modern' is usually around 6in x 4in or larger / 'Old Standard' is usually around 5½in x 3½in. Larger sizes mentioned, but if you need to know the exact size please ask as this can vary.

All postcards are not totally new and are pre-owned. It's inevitable that older cards may show signs of ageing and use, particularly if sent through the post. Any faults other than normal ageing are noted.

Stock No.: A141

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UK (incl. IOM, CI & BFPO): 99p

Europe: £1.60

Rest of world (inc. USA etc): £2.75

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NOTE: All postcards are sent in brand new stiffened envelopes which I have bought for the task. These are specially made to protect postcards and you may be able to re-use them. In addition there are other costs to sending so the above charge is not just for the stamp!

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information:

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Johan Zoffany, Zoffani or Zauffelij (13 March 1733 – 11 November 1810) was a German neoclassical painter, active mainly in England. His works appear in many prominent British national galleries such as the National Gallery, London and the Tate Gallery and in the Royal Collection.

Johan Zoffany was born Johannes Josephus Zaufallij in Frankfurt 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. 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, for his charmingly informal scenes — such as Queen Charlotte and Her Two Eldest Children (1765),^[1] 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.^[2] He also was popular with the Austrian royal family, and in 1776 was created 'Baron' by the archduchess Maria Theresia.

Johann Zoffany was also a Freemason and was initiated into the Craft on December 19, 1763 at The Old King's Lodge No 28^[3]

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 actress, in particular David Garrick, the most famous actor of his day – Garrick as Hamlet and Garrick as King Lear – and 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^[4] 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 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.

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, 11 November 1810. He is buried in the churchyard of St Anne's Church, Kew. The painter Gainsborough was, by that artist's own request, later buried nearby.

In popular culture

In the comic opera The Pirates of Penzance, by Gilbert and Sullivan, the Major-General in his eponymous song of being able to distinguish works by Raphael from works by Gerard Dou 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. One of the paintings was Colonel Mordant's Cock Fight which included, Martin, Ozias Humphrey and Zoffany himself. On his way back to England (where he had settled in the 1750s) he was shipwrecked off the Andaman Islands. 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."^[5].