The brush of an angel

Although Angelica Kauffman painted royalty, became a founding member of the Royal Academy and gained recognition from Dublin to St Petersburg, she still had to contend with bias even long after her death, as Matthew Dennison discovers

- Matthew Dennison

AN Address from Britannia to the celebrated Angelica, printed in the Public Advertiser on January 20, 1767, acclaimed a 20something Swiss-born painter, who would shortly sign the petition to George III that precipitated the foundation of the Royal Academy (RA). 'What wonderful effects from light and shade!' rhapsodised the poetaster: 'Such colouring was ne'er since Rubens shown.'

The artist in question, known to her British admirers as 'Miss Angel' and to art scholars as Angelica Kauffman, was a young woman acknowledged in her lifetime as a leading portraitist and history painter. In Britain, her champions included Joshua Reynolds and Robert Adam, for whom she contributed to decorative schemes at Harewood House, West Yorkshire, Osterley Park in Middlesex and the Adelphi in London. Within months of her arrival in the capital, she received a prestigious commission from Augusta, Princess of Wales, to paint the King's sister, Augusta, Duchess of Brunswick, and her newborn son, a conventional subject she invested with the 'noble simplicity and quiet grandeur' that, in 1755, archaeologist and art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (whom she also painted) had argued were key to ancient Greek art and belonged at the heart of the emerging neo-Classical movement.

Over time, Kauffmann's eminence was unrivalled. She painted many of Europe's crowned heads, declining Ferdinand IV of Naples's offer of a post as court painter; her friends included Goethe and her French counterpart Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun; she died celebrated and wealthy.