Her Early Life

Maria Anna Angelica Kauffman, better known as Angelica Kauffman, who was also famously known as ‘Miss Angel’, was Austrian. She was born in 1741 in Chur Switzerland. Her mother was Swiss and her father Joseph Johann Kauffmann, an unsuccessful painter, was Austrian. Her father had a studio where he was at work as a painter. Angelica grew up in his studio and she was very attentive while her father was painting. Her father noticed that she had a great taste for painting when Angelica was eleven years old and that she was immensely talented to the extent of being a prodigy. But, he used to ask Angelica not to sing her painting so that her paintings would pass off as his own. She was also a gifted musician and spoke four languages. Though she was born in Switzerland, she spent much of her life in London and Rome.

Her Twin Talents, Painting and Singing

Some of the other successful women painters, including Artemisia Gentileschi and Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, were also daughters of painters. It is now a very well-known fact that talented and aspiring female painters always needed such a background to acquire an artistic background in those days. But Angelica was a prodigy and this was proved by her self-portrait that she made when she was barely 13 years of age. In addition to being a talented artist, she was the proud owner of a beautiful singing voice and she was an amateur singer all her life. This duel talent in her made it a bit difficult for her to make a decision regarding which one of her traits should she choose between painting and singing in her youth. Angelica was cultured, widely travelled and multi-lingual from childhood. Unlike many other female artists, she did not flourish from the fringes but from the very centre of the recognised British art establishment.

‘Miss Angel’

Angelica went to London in 1766 when she became established as a painter in Italy. At that time, she was just 25 years of age. She became so successful in London that a word was coined to describe people’s obsession with her, ‘Angelicamad’. Her works were reproduced in engravings on teapots and porcelain The new invention of ‘transfer printing’ made these items much cheaper and she gained an international reputation. As it happened in the case of numerous other women painters when it came to painting the human body, she too had to follow the unwritten traits of decorum, which male painters need not adhere to, or lose her aristocratic patrons. Experts believe that Angelia was under enormous pressure to behave as ‘Miss Angel’, the affectionate name that she earned from her friend, Joshua Reynolds. In 1767, Angelica was tricked into marriage by a bigamous fake count, a scandal that could easily have scuppered her career.

Her Famous Portraits ensured her own fame

Angelica’s mother died when she was 13 and she moved with her father from Como to Milan and then to Schwarzenberg in Austria before returning to Italy. She became a member of the Accademia di Belli Arti di Firenze in 1762 and this was n extraordinary achievement for a woman of only 21. Besides being artistically talented, she was also very charming. She became a fashionable portraitist for British tourists in Rome, the centre of the Western art world. Angelica became the best friend of another painter Joshua Reynolds. They painted each other’s portraits. In 1764, Angelica painted a portrait of the famous German art historian and archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann. In this painting, Angelica depicted him as in deep thought in a dark room. With this famous painting, her fame then became assured.

A Founding Member of The Royal Academy

Angelica did history and literary painting as much ease as she did portraits, often showing melancholy women left behind by the macho exploits of their men. She painted many aristocrats and members of the royal family, including Queen Charlotte. Angelica spent only 15 years in England, but she made a significant impact on the 18th century London art scene. Queen Charlotte and Angelica were about the same age and it was probably due to the influence of the Queen that Angelica was one of the only two women to become founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts when it opened in 1768. Angelica was commissioned to paint portraits of aristocrats and members of the clergy, such as the Bishop of Como, Nevroni Cappucino and possibly Archbishop Richard Robinson. The last painting is also attributed to Joshua Reynolds.

An Unsuspecting Victim of a Terrible Scandal

The year before the inauguration of the Royal Academy, Angelica’s life was marred by terrible scadal; she was duped into marrying a man who presented himself as Frederickde Horn, a wealthy Swedish count. He was in fact a brute, a swindler and a penniless ordinary valet. The relationship brokedown within a few months they never saw each other again. He had already humiliated Angelica and stolen her savings. This was followed by a distressing rumour of a conspiracy that appeared in a magazine saying that Angelic’s co-painter Josua Reynolds had a hand in this affair. However, Angelica denied that there was any truth in these assertions. Angelica and Joshua Reynorlds remained friends for the rest of their lives.

‘Self-Portrait of the Artist hesitating between the Arts of Music and Painting‘

Angelica’s well-known painting ”Self-Portrait of the Artist hesitating between the Arts of Music and Painting‘ is the depiction of a young woman dressed in an immaculate white dress standing between two other figures, each in red and blue costumes. These two figures in red and blue colour costumes are identified as the personifications of two human artistic traits, music and painting. The painting seems to explain away the artist’s youthful dilemma that Angelica faced while choosing between one of her two important talents, music and painting, to shape the future course of her life. Angelica made this painting when she was 5 years of age. She made numerous self-portraits to publicise her work. Certainly, Angelica never had to regret choosing painting as her life’s career. Angelica triumphed and overcame this episode with the help of her friends and her friend Joshua Reynolds. She was by then supporting her father and paying for the running her household. She earned her living primarily as a portrait painter. Out of around 22 portraits that she painted during this period, nine are self-portraits. In a single year, in 1768, Angelica painted ‘Hector Taking Leave of Andromache’, ‘Venus Directinv Aeneas and Achates to Carthage’ and ‘Penelope Taking Down the Bow of Ulysses’.

Angelica Kauffmann’s Final Years

When Angelica died in 1807, a commemorative bust of her was sculpted by her cousin Johann Petr Kaufmann and placed next to Raphael’s in the Pantheon in the heart of Rome. She had become so famous that her biography was p published in 1810 by the poet and biographer Giovanni Gherardo de Rossi. Angelica’s life became inspiration for Anne Isabella Thackeray’s 1875 novel ‘Miss Angel’. Although Angelica had been embraced by the Royal Academy, the battle for gender equality took more than 150 years from the date of her initial appointment to be elected to full membership of the Royal Academy.

Angelica Kauffman Paintings

Some of the well-known paintings of Angelica include ‘Saint Mary of Egypt’, ‘Augustin de Lespinasse’, ‘Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well’, ‘The Three Singers’, ‘The Portrait of a Woman at Her Toilet’, ‘Count Nikolai Tolstoy with His Wife Anna I, vanovna and their son Alexander’, ‘Portrait of Loreno Hervas Y Panduro’, ‘Thomas Noel-Hill, 2nd Baron Berwick of Attingham’, ‘Self-Portrait of the Artist hesitating between the Arts of Music and Painting’, ‘Venus Persuades Helen to Accept the Love of Paris’, ‘Valentine Rescues Silvia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona’, ‘Diomed and Cressida (from William Shakespeare’s ‘Troilus and Cressida’, Act V, Scene II), etc