ART
The president of the Royal Academy Rebecca Salter uncovers the trailblazing career of the neoclassical painter Angelica Kauffman
I DOUBT MANY PEOPLE WILL HAVE HEARD OF the artist Angelica Kauffman, which is shocking. A founding member of the Royal Academy of Arts, she was a phenomenal talent, equipped with extraordinary selfconfidence and wildly successful.
Born in Switzerland in 1741, Kauffman was a child prodigy, taught to paint by her father. She arrived in England when she was 25, already multilingual; brilliant at music; well travelled. Her first studio was in Golden Square, London, where she was in demand and plugged into the salon scene. Financially savvy, she was paid roughly the same as her male contemporaries. Many of her sitters were women, and she painted portraits of high-profile personalities such as Emma Hamilton and David Garrick.
The Royal Academy was created in 1768. Kauffman was friends with Joshua Reynolds, its founding president, and became one of two female founding academicians along with Mary Moser. Her practice had already evolved; she moved into ‘history painting’, a genre that was considered the highest form of art, in which subjects pretend to be figures from classical history, mytholog y or the Bible. She often chose female protagonists, such as Cleopatra Adorning the Tomb of Mark Anthony (1765) which is in the RA’s exhibition chronicling her work.
In Johan Zoffany’s group portrait The Academicians of the Royal Academy (1771– 1772), everyo
