Angelica Kauffman RA

(1741 - 1807)

 

Angelica Kauffman RA was born in Chur, Switzerland, on 30 October 1741, was a Swiss Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome. Remembered primarily as a history painter,

Kauffman was a skilled portraitist, landscape and decoration painter. She was, along with Mary Moser, one of two female painters among the 34 founding members of the Royal Academy in London in 1768.

 

Anglelica's father was an impoverished artist who encouraged his daughter's interest in art. By the age of 11, her prodigious talents were widely recognised: she was a gifted musician, spoke four languages, and was commissioned to paint portraits of aristocrats and members of the clergy.

 

Her mother died when Angelica was 13 and she and her father moved from Como to Milan and then to Schwarzenberg in Austria before returning to Italy, where Angelica became a member of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze in 1762 - an extraordinary achievement for a woman of only 21. As famous for her charm as she was for her artistic gifts, she became a fashionable portraitist for British tourists in Rome - then the centre of the Western art world - and became close friends with Joshua Reynolds (they painted each other's portraits).

 

In 1766, encouraged by Joshua Reynolds, Angelica moved to London, where she introduced the latest neoclassical ideas and established herself as a professional artist. Although 'self-advertisement was thought to be unfeminine', she was a canny self-promoter. She was now supporting her father and paying for the running of her household.

 

In 1767, the year before the inauguration of the Royal Academy, Angelica's life was marred by a terrible scandal: she was duped into marrying a man who presented himself as Frederick de Horn, a wealthy Swedish count. He was in fact a penniless valet. The relationship ended after a few months, but not before he had humiliated Angelica and stolen her savings.

 

In 1781, in London, Angelica married the Venetian artist Antonio Zucchi - a man, by all accounts who was the opposite of her first husband. In July that year, accompanied by her father, they sailed for Ostend and eventually settled in Venice, where Angelica's portraits were in high demand. However, when her father died in the city in January 1782, Angelica couldn't bear to stay. Grief-stricken, they moved to Naples, where Angelica made sketches for a royal portrait, and then to Rome, where she became close friends with the renowned writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe who she painted in 1787.

 

When Angelica died in 1807, she had successfully infiltrated the male dominated world of classical and portrait art in both London and Rome, and established herself as a leading artist of her time.

 

Although Kauffman had been embraced by the Royal Academy, the battle for equality was far from over. It took 168 years from the appointments of Kauffman and Moser for a woman to elected to full membership of the Royal Academy with the arrival of Laura Knight in 1936.