Angelica Kauffman

There is a brilliant exhibition of the 18th century portrait and history painter Angelica Kauffman (German spelling: Angelika Kauffmann) on at the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf. I must have seen several of her works before, including a portrait of Goethe, and must have walked under four of her painting on the ceiling of the Royal Academy at Burlington House, but somehow never joined the dots and explored her life which was quite remarkable. So after seeing the exhibition earlier this week, I am now reading her biography to catch up.

In her time, she was famous as a portraitist, honing her skills first in Italy, where she allegedly painted "all the Englishmen" passing through on their Grand Tour, as well as other celebrities. Thanks to the contacts with the travelling Englishmen she was then able to move to London, establish herself as a history painter and became a founding member of the Royal Academy of Arts.

The portraits are amazing, but what really makes her relevant to our times is the depiction of gender in her history paintings - she shows the heroes of Homer's epics as soft and feminine figures torn by hard decisions, and women like Penelope as strong forces for peace in a world shaped by male views of heroism and conflict. So she really did manage to impose her own viewpoint, in spite of some critics (like Schlegel) grumbling about her "inability" to paint proper male heroes.

This pioneering feminist perspective apparently helped her rediscovery and appraisal in the late 20th century (the biography I'm reading, written by Waltraud Maierhofer, dates from 1997), but I completely missed the memo back then. Partly explained by the fact that many of her works are in private collections still or in obscure museums, and exhibitions are few and far between. So go and see her work either now at the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf (until 24.5.2020) or later this year at the Royal Academy London (28.6.-20.9.2020).




The artist torn between music and art - I can relate to that ...
[image source]


Check this thread of women painted by women ...