The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (522 page)

 
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(1733–1810).
German-born painter who settled in England in about 1760 after working in Rome. He was patronized by the famous actor David Garrick and made his name with paintings representing scenes from plays, usually showing Garrick in one of his favourite parts. They show how quickly he adapted to English taste, and he also painted
conversation pieces
of much the same small scale and in the same relaxed vein. No doubt because of his German background, he was taken up by George III and Queen Charlotte and he painted numerous works for the royal family. The two most important (still in the Royal Collection) are
The Academicians of the Royal Academy
(1772) and
The Tribuna of the Uffizi
(1772–8). For the latter he made a long visit to Florence (1772–9) and when he returned to England he found that the demand for conversation pieces had slumped. He went to India in 1783 and made a fortune painting Indian princes and expatriate Britons before returning to England in 1789. The remainder of his career was undistinguished. For a long time Zoffany's paintings were valued chiefly as historical records (they are sharp and clear in detail and contain a wealth of information about costume, etc.), but he is now also appreciated for his charm and recognized as an artist who brought new life to the conversation piece.

 
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(1887–1966).
Lithuanian-born American sculptor. Initially Zorach worked as a painter in a vivid
Fauvist
style, but he took up sculpture in 1917 and abandoned painting (apart from watercolours) about five years later. His sculpture is figurative and its salient characteristics are firm contours, block-like bulk, and suppression of details: ‘I owe most’, he said, ‘to the great periods of primitive carving in the past—not to the modern or the classical Greeks, but to the Africans, the Persians, the Mesopotamians, the archaic Greeks and of course to the Egyptians.’ He was a pioneer in America of the revival of direct carving in stone and wood and in this as well as in his formal austerity he exercised a powerful influence on modern American sculpture. He had numerous major commissions, including relief carvings for the Municipal Court Building, New York (1958). His most famous work is not a carving, however, but the aluminium
Spirit of the Dance
(1932) for Radio City Music Hall, New York—a heroic female figure that was banished for a time because of its nudity but reinstated by public pressure. Zorach taught at the
Art Students League
from 1929 to 1966. His wife,
Marguerite Thompson Zorach
(1887–1968), was one of America's leading modernist painters in the years immediately before and immediately after the
Armory Show
(1913), in which both she and her husband exhibited. At this time she painted in a style influenced by Fauvism and
Expressionism
. In her later career, however, much of her time was spent selflessly helping her husband with his scupltural commissions, producing many of the preliminary drawings for his work.

 
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(1860–1920).
Swedish painter and etcher. After leaving the Stockholm Academy in 1881 because of its restrictive and outdated ideas, he travelled widely, becoming the most cosmopolitan of Scandinavian artists and an international success. He was based in London (1882–5), then Paris (1888–96), and visited Spain, Italy, the Balkans, North Africa, and (on several occasions) the USA, where he painted three Presidents. Originally he worked almost exclusively in watercolour, but in 1887–90 he abandoned the medium for oils. In 1896 he settled permanently at Mora in Sweden, building his own house, which is now a museum dedicated to him. He painted three main types of pictures: portraits,
genre
scenes (often depicting the life and customs of the area in which he lived), and female nudes. It is for his nudes—unashamedly healthy and voluptuous works—that he is now best known. He often painted them in landscape settings and delighted in vibrant effects of light on the human body, depicted through lush brushwork that recalls the handling of his friend Max
Liebermann
. Zorn also gained a great reputation for his etchings and he occasionally made sculpture.

 
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(1702–88).
Italian painter of landscapes, often featuring mythological subjects. He was born near Florence and studied in Rome, but is associated chiefly with Venice, where he settled in 1732 and worked in the vein of pastoral landscape popularized by Marco
Ricci
. Like
Canaletto
, Zuccarelli was patronized by the English entrepreneur Joseph Smith and his work found a ready market in England. When Richard
Wilson
(still primarily a portrait painter) visited Venice in 1751 he painted Zuccarelli's portrait and it was perhaps Zuccarelli's encouragement which induced him to turn his attention to landscape. In 1752–62 and again in 1765–71 Zuccarelli worked in England, where his delicate
Rococo
style met with great success. He was made a foundation member of the
Royal Academy
in 1768, and on his return to Venice he became President of the Venetian Academy.

 
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