Oxford historian and biographer Goodden (The Sweetness of Life,
1999) enlists her considerable knowledge of 18th-century art
history in this fine study of the popular, though frequently
belittled, Swiss painter Angelica Kauffman.Goodden attempts to
raise Kauffman's technical reputation while acknowledging her
faults. Much like her contemporary Vigee Le Brun, Kauffman was
denied the rigorous art training afforded to men, such as learning
to draw anatomy from life, and relegated to so-called feminine and
decorative subjects such as flower-painting and botanical drawing.
However, Kauffman was a sensational popular portraitist in her
heyday of late 18th-century London-she was triumphantly elected to
the Royal Academy in 1768. She learned how to paint from her
Austrian father, who would exert a strong influence on her for most
of her life. Early on, she rejected her Swiss origins, and she
received her formative training in Italy, copying the masters. On
her Grand Tour, she picked up important commissions from the
aristocracy, and her fame grew, as did her earnings for portraits;
the young woman was the breadwinner in the household. Famous
portraits of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and David Garrick
established her reputation by the time she arrived in London, and
she cemented important friendships with Joshua Reynolds and Henry
Fuseli. Despite a rash marriage to a man who turned out to be a
faux aristocrat and bigamist, Kauffman seems to have lead the
quiet, single-minded life of a serious and industrious artist; her
Catholicism prompted her to eventually flee her beloved England and
settle in Rome with a second husband and friend to her father. A
portrait of Goethe followed on their brief acquaintance, though he
complained it was "effeminate." In the end, the author deems
Kauffman a populist, adaptable painter whose own success creating
pretty pictures damned her.Goodden's well-measured life of the
artist may help bring Kauffman's oeuvre back to light. (Kirkus
Reviews)
The life and times of one of the most important women painters -
and celebrities - of the eighteenth century. A word was coined to
describe the condition of people stricken with a new kind of fever
when the Swiss-born artist Angelica Kauffman (1741 - 1807) came to
London in 1766. 'The whole world', it was said, 'is Angelicamad.'
One of the most successful women artists in history - a painter who
possessed what her friend Goethe called an 'unbelievable' and
'massive' talent - Kauffman became the toast of Georgian England,
captivating society with her portraits, mythological scenes and
decorative compositions. She knew and painted poets, novelists and
playwrights, collaborating with them and illustrating their work;
her designs adorned the houses of the Grand Tourists she had met
and painted in Italy; actors, statesmen, philosophers, kings and
queen sat to her; and she was the force that launched a thousand
engravings. Despite rumours of relationships with other artists
(including Sir Joshua Reynolds), and an apparently bigamous and
annulled first marriage to a pseudo Count, Kauffman was adopted by
royalty in England and abroad as a model of social and artistic
decorum. adaptations from classical antiquity and sentimental
literature; a commercially successful celebrity yet also a founding
member of The Royal Academy of arts; the virginal creator of
sexually ambivalent beings who was one of the hardest-headed
businesswomen of her age, Kauffman's life and work is full of
apparent contradictions explored in this first biography in over 80
years.
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