Angelica Kauffman

The Royal Academy fetes a founding female member, one of the most celebrated painters of the 18th century

Internationally renowned, highly educated and well connected, Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807) had a brilliant career as a pioneering history painter, an innovative portraitist and one of only two women among the founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768. Her patrons included nobility and celebrities across the continent. Apart from her portraits, her history paintings reinvented the genre by almost exclusively featuring female subjects. She was admired by Goethe and Herder, and one Danish diplomat even wrote during her lifetime: ＂the whole world is Angelica-mad.＂
This exhibition at the Royal Academy, and its corresponding catalog, covers Kauffman’s life and work: from her beginnings as a child prodigy and rise to fame in London to her later career across Europe, settling in Rome where her studio became a hub for the city’s cultural life. The volume presents some of her most extraordinary artwork, including her self-portraits, history paintings of female subjects such as Circe and Cleopatra, and her ceiling paintings made for the Royal Academy’s original location at Somerset House.