1296, 1297. LANDSCAPES.
Giuseppe Zais (Venetian: died 1784).
Zais, a Venetian, was a pupil of the Florentine landscape and decorative painter Zuccarelli (1702-1788) who settled for many years at Venice. Zuccarelli in 1752 came to this country, where in 1768 he became an original member of the Royal Academy. The works of Zais also for a time attracted the attention of English amateurs, but he died a pauper in the hospital of Treviso.
Amusing examples of the so-called "pastoral landscape," which found favour in the last century—the landscape painted "in praise of the country by men who lived in coffee-houses." Zais was nearly contemporary with Longhi, and shows us the same Venetians in villeggiatura whom Longhi shows us in town (see 1100 and 1101). In 1286 we see some "picturesque" farm-buildings on one side of a stream, with a "picturesque" cow-herd asleep; whilst on the other side is a party of gay ladies—dressed in crinolines and bows, and devoid of hats, shawls, or wraps—flirting with beaux. The companion picture (1297) is conceived in the same style; but the ladies are here fishing, though, to judge from the amateurishness of their proceeding, they are not likely to catch fish.