Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807) was one of the most admired, desired, and envied European artists of her day. She now holds a more subtle role in the history of art. Compared to female artists such as Frida Kahlo and Artemisia Gentileschi, she lacks extremity. Perhaps she remains too close to aristocracy, a now-discarded classicism, and a life governed by manners. Maybe she was just overrated, now absorbed into the deceptively broad field of neoclassicism, and at aesthetic odds with many artists of her time and the Romantic detonations which followed.
This Royal Academy exhibition brings together over thirty Kauffman works tracing the full course of her career. It opens with a selection of her self-portraits, followed by works from her early years in Rome and her scene-conquering period in London. Then come works representative of her relationship with the Royal Academy of Arts and, finally, examples from her mature years back in Rome.
The extraordinary contemporary popularity of her work was aided by the advancing methods of reproduction through prints, appealing to both the elite and the general public, while porcelain manufacturers such as Meissen and Sèvres seized upon Kauffman’s engraved designs as her fame grew.
Few personal records of hers remain, but there was little she could do about the testimonies of others. The gossip she sought to evade has to an extent remained attached