Maria Anna Angelika Kauffmann RA (30 October 1741 – 5 November 1807), usually known in English as Angelica Kauffman, was a Swiss Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome. Remembered primarily as a history painter, Kauffmann was a skilled portraitist, landscape and decoration painter. She was, along with Mary Moser, one of two female painters among the founding members of the Royal Academy in London in 1768.
Early life
Detail of Tragedy and Comedy, painted in Rome in 1791 (National Museum in Warsaw). Harmonious and powerful colours and the soft-brushed, multi-layered style of English portraitists, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough,are typical for Kauffmann's paintings.
Kauffman was born at Chur in Graubünden, Switzerland. Her family moved to Morbegno in 1742, then Como in Lombardy in 1752 at that time under Austrian rule. In 1757 she accompanied her father to Schwarzenberg in Vorarlberg/Austria where her father was working for the local bishop. Her father, Joseph Johann Kauffmann, was a relatively poor man but a skilled Austrian muralist and painter, who was often traveling for his work. He trained Angelica and she worked as his assistant, moving through Switzerland, Austria, and Italy. Angelica, a child prodigy, rapidly acquired several languages from her mother, Cleophea Lutz, including German, Italian, French and English. She also showed talent as a musician and was forced to choose between opera and art. She quickly chose art as a Catholic priest told her that the opera was a dangerous place filled with "seedy people." By her twelfth year she had already become known as a painter, with bishops and nobles being her sitters.
Years in Great Britain
While in Venice, Kauffman was persuaded by Lady Wentworth, the wife of the British ambassador, to accompany her to London. One of the first pieces she completed in London was a portrait of David Garrick, exhibited in the year of her arrival at "Mr Moreing's great room in Maiden Lane." The rank of Lady Wentworth opened society to her, and she was everywhere well received, the royal family especially showing her great favour. Her firmest friend, however, was Sir Joshua Reynolds. In his pocket-book her name as "Miss Angelica" or "Miss Angel" appears frequently; and in 1766 he painted her, a compliment which she returned by her Portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Another instance of her intimacy with Reynolds is to be found in her variation of Guercino's Et in Arcadia ego, a subject which Reynolds repeated a few years later in his portrait of Mrs Bouverie and Mrs Crewe.
History painting
While Kauffman produced portraits, and self-portraits, she identified herself primarily as a history painter, an unusual designation for a woman artist in the 18th century. History painting was considered the most elite and lucrative category in academic painting during this time period and, under the direction of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the Royal Academy made a strong effort to promote it to a native audience more interested in commissioning and buying portraits and landscapes. Despite the popularity that Kauffman enjoyed in British society, and her success there as an artist, she was disappointed by the relative apathy of the British towards history painting. Ultimately, she left Britain for Rome, where history painting was better established, held in higher esteem and patronized.
Kauffman is also well known by the numerous engravings from her designs by Schiavonetti, Francesco Bartolozzi and others. Those by Bartolozzi especially found considerable favour with collectors. Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827), artist, patriot, and founder of a major American art dynasty, named several of his children after notable European artists, including a daughter, Angelica Kauffman Peale.
A biography of Kauffman was published in 1810 by Giovanni Gherardo De Rossi . The book was also the basis of a romance by Léon de Wailly (1838) and it prompted the novel contributed by Anne Isabella Thackeray to the Cornhill Magazine in 1875 entitled "Miss Angel".
The Angelika Kauffmann Museum in Schwarzenberg, Vorarlberg (Austria) was established in 2007. This location is in the same area that her father called home. The annually changing exhibitions focus on different aspects and themes of her artistic work. In the 2019 exhibition "Angelika Kauffmann – Unknown Treasures from Vorarlberg Private Collections", many of her paintings were shown to the public for the first time, as a large proportion of her oeuvre is owned by private collectors. The museum is housed in the so-called "Kleberhaus", an old farmhouse in the typical architectural style of the region.
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