Angelica Kauffman by Miranda Miller

 

Angelica Paintress of Minds, my novel about the eighteenth -century artist Angelica Kauffman, was published by The Barbican Press in 2020. Publication was carefully timed to coincide with an exhibition of her work at the Royal Academy. Then Covid happened and the exhibition, together with so much else, was cancelled. So you can imagine how delighted I was when this excellent show opened at the Royal Academy in March. I particularly admire her portraits and self -portraits. 

 
This portrait she did of the great actor David Garrick displays her talent for empathy and warmth. While she was painting it in Naples in 1764, she said he kept trying to make her laugh, his wit and enjoyment of each other’s company led to a flirtation. Garrick sent this verse to St James’s Chronicle:

While thus you paint with Ease and Grace,

And spirit all your own;

Take, if you please, my Mind and Face,

But let my heart alone.


This has been a wonderful year for Angelica Kauffman and for women artists in general. She is one of the stars of a fascinating exhibition at Tate Britain: NOW YOU SEE US: WOMEN ARTISTS IN BRITAIN 1520–1920 (on until October 13th). At last, it seems, women artists are being taken seriously. The exhibition tells the story of their long battle to be allowed to pursue an artistic education. Artemisia Gentileschi and Angelica Kauffman were only able to become painters because they grew up in their fathers’ studios. 

 

This painting of Venus and Cupid inducing Helen to fall in love with Paris shows her gift for presenting mythology from the point of view of women. Kauffman and the botanical artist Mary Moser were amongst the founder members of the Royal Academy of Arts. Even so they were excluded from life drawing classes because it was “indelicate” for a woman to stare at a naked man, and no other women were admitted until Laura Knight was elected to the RA in 1936.

Almost all the paintings in this exhibition are of women as well as by them; it seems that women often preferred to sit for other women. There are some interesting discoveries, for example Frances Reynolds, the sister of Joshua, painted an excellent portrait of Elizabeth Montagu, the leader of the Bluestockings. By the mid-nineteenth century the fight to be valued as artists merged with the wider campaign for women’s rights which is, I think, why this exhibition is so important.

Julia Margaret Cameron was given a camera in 1863, and her photographs are now considered to be some of the finest ever taken. The Slade was founded in 1871 based on a financial bequest from Felix Slade, who became its namesake. It was, and still is, part of University College London (UCL), which had been founded in 1826 as London's first university and the first university in Britain to be entirely secular. The Slade admitted women students on equal terms with men from its founding. The barrier to life drawing was finally broken down. and they quickly outnumbered male students. I was surprised to see that In the First World War there were women war photographers, such as Anna Airy. 

 

Miranda Miller’s ninth novel, When I Was, will be published next March by Barbican Press. www.mirandamiller.info.

A Sense of Place by Miranda Miller

 

                                             Angelica Kauffman self portrait at twelve

 

A few years ago, I had a Royal Literary Fund fellowship to help students at the Courtauld Institute, then in Somerset House, to write essays. While I was waiting for my Art History students to turn up,I sat in my attic office and wondered about the past of this great building. A hundred stairs down in the basement library, I found two wonderful books: James Fenton’s witty School for Genius and Angelica Goodden’s excellent Miss Angel, the Art and World of Angelica Kauffman. I’d seen a few of her paintings in Kenwood House in Hampstead but knew nothing about her extraordinary career.

 

                                                        Somerset House

 

 

I learnt that in the 18^th century a rotting Tudor palace on the Thames, in the Strand, was replaced by Sir William Chambers. His magnificent neo-classical building was a fitting setting for the ambitions of a group of artists, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, Angelica Kauffman and the botanical artist Mary Moser, who were all in love with the art of ancient Greece and Rome. They founded the Royal Academy of Arts in Somerset House in 1768 and with their new royal charter they hoped to give more dignity to the arts in England. The inclusion of the two women in this illustrious group was significant, although they weren’t allowed to attend life drawing classes, as you can see from this painting by Zoffany:

 The male artists stride confidently around gossiping together, gazing at the naked male model, while portraits of Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser stare wistfully down from the wall, like ancestors. It’s a terrible reflection on British misogyny in the arts that it wasn’t until 1928 that another woman artist, Dame Laura Knight, was fully accepted as an RA.

 

 My fascination with all this became my eighth novel, Angelica Paintress of Minds. She charmed me as she charmed the painters, musicians and also the royal family in eighteenth century London. A talented artist, musician and linguist, Angelica also had a gift for friendship. Her friends included Sir Joshua Reynolds, Henry Fuseli, Queen Charlotte, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Emma Hamilton and Antonio Canova Throughout her life she painted honest self-portraits, as well as portraits of her friends, all of whom appear in my novel. When she was 27, she fell in love with and married the “Count de Horne”, a con man who was after her money. Thanks mainly to her friendship with Queen Charlotte she sailed through this potential scandal, which would have destroyed a less brilliant woman. As well as portraits, then the bread and butter of artists, she painted many allegorical, mythological and history paintings, often depicting melancholy women whose lives had been ruined by the macho exploits of their men.

Picture Ariadne abandoned by Theseus

 

 After fifteen years in London, when she was so successful that the word “Angelicamad” was coined, she moved to Rome with her second husband, Antonio Zucchi, a Venetian decorative artist who had come to England to work with the Adams brothers. Before she married him, she drew up what we’d now call a prenup, giving her total control over her own money. 

 

                                                        The Spanish Steps

 

 

Thanks to a generous grant from the Society of Authors I was able to go to Rome, where I‘d lived in my twenties. I was thrilled to revisit a city I love and which has changed remarkably little since Angelica built her beautiful house at the top of the Spanish steps. Sadly, it’s been demolished and replaced by a grand hotel where my partner and I enjoyed a very expensive cappuccino. I shut my eyes and reconstructed the floorplan I’d seen of her house. After that I felt even closer to her. She flourished in Rome, which was then the centre of the international art world. Grand Tourists and artists flocked to Rome and Angelica ran a salon that was a magnet for painters, writers and musicians from all over Europe.

 

On the same trip I also visited Weimar, where Goethe built himself a house with an imitation Italianate courtyard and staircase after the two years he spent in Italy studying art. He became a close friend of Angelica’s and I believe she was unrequitedly in love with him. He referred to her as a “tender soul” but didn’t like her portrait of him, which shows a sensitive side of his personality:

“It is always a handsome fellow, but there is no trace of me," he commented. Goethe much preferred to see himself as a "cultural hero," as in the more famous painting of him by Tischbein. Wandering around the grand house where he lived for fifty years I felt I understood him better.

 

 Napoleon’s army invaded Rome and the Pope was taken prisoner. Angelica feared that her  own paintings and her valuable art collection would be looted by French soldiers. Zucchi died, she became ill and many of her cosmopolitan friends fled. Angelica wrote in a letter to a friend, “those happy days are over;” yet she faced her difficult last years with the courage and determination she had shown all her life and continued to paint.  When she died in 1807 her friend, the sculptor Antonio Canova,organised a majestic funeral.

 

 While you’re writing a novel time is quite fluid in your head: the eighteenth century, the 1970s and this morning are all happening at once. For me, this imaginative conjuring trick was made easier by the magnificent architecture of Somerset House and the Spanish Steps, and by the Italian influence visible in Goethe’s house in Weimar. In the past I was sceptical about the idea that physically visiting places helps you to write but now I’m convinced. 

 

Angelica Paintress of Minds, will be published in the US by Barbican Press this month. 

                                                                 

Angelica, Paintress of Minds by Miranda Miller

   When I was writing my novel about the fascinating painter Angelica Kauffman there were two things I found difficult to understand: her devout Catholicism (I am not religious) and her fear of change in her last years, when she was living in Rome, widowed, waiting for Napoleon’s army to invade. In early nineteenth century century terms she was an old lady - actually younger than I am now - and she wanted to continue to shine in the brilliant world of art and culture in London and Rome that no longer existed because of the wars. Change is inevitable, I thought rather impatiently as I wrote about her sadness and fear of the new century.

   The last few strange months have changed all of our lives and now I think I have more empathy for people who lived through past wars and pandemics. We spend most of our lives deluding ourselves that we are important and then some disaster comes along to remind us that we are actually tiny and have no control over these great events.

   Angelica was a determined woman who controlled her life from childhood, when her precocious gift was regognised and exploited by her father, an unsuccessful painter. Hers was one of those talents that was perfectly attuned to the taste of her age and she made the most of it, painting portraits of the rich and famous that were flattering and also psychologically acute, like this one of the great classical scho;ar Winckelmann, who was a friend,.

   Angelica was good looking and charming, a talented singer who spoke German, Italian and English. When she was twenty-five she moved to London where she very quickly established herself in the highly competitive art world. A new word was coined: Angelicamad. Joshua Reynold liked and encouraged her and as well as portraits she did History and literary paintings, often showing melancholy women left behind by the macho exploits of their men, She also painted many aristocrats and members of the royal family, including Queen Charlotte, who befriended her. These two intelligent cultivated young women were about the same age and the Queen, who was lonely in En gland, was relieved to be able to speak German . This ia a mezzotint of Angelica’s allegorical painting of the Queen about to awaken the sleeping arts in Great Britain.

   Angelica was always aware that as a ‘paintress’ she did not have the sexual freedom of male artists. Remarkably, her career and reputation were not damaged by the one mistake she made, her first marriage to the ‘Count de Horn’ who turned out to be a con man. It was probably due to the influence of the Queen that Angelica was one of only two women to become founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts when it opened in 1768. She was a shrewd businesswoman who made a lot of money during her years in London. Here is one of many self portraits she painted from the age of thirteen. I found them very helpful as a guide to exploring her life.

    In her late thirties, after her first bigamous marriage was annulled, she married Antonio Zucchi, a Venetian decorative painter fifteen years older than her. She had seen many other women artists ruined by marriage because their husbands were jealous of their talent or objected to their earning money as painters. She drew up what we would call a pre-nuptial agreement, giving her total control over her own money. In fact Zucchi was happy to be supportive of his more famous wife and their marriage seems to have been a happy one.


   In 1780 Lord George Gordon let a violently anti-Catholic mob on a rampage of rioting, looting and burning in London that lasted for several days. As Catholics, Angelica and her household were terrified and decided to move back to Italy.


   Rome was then the centre of the European art world,where all the Grand Tourists came. Angelica and her husband lived in a very grand house at the top of the Spanish steps. When I was researching my novel I visited Rome, thanks to a generous grant from the Authors’ Foundation, and found that her house has been demolished and replaced by a luxury hotel.

   Her house became an international cultural centre and during those years Angelica painted the Queen of Naples, Antonio Canova, Germaine de Stael, Emma Hamilton and Goethe, all of whom were her friends. After Zucchi died in 1795 she wrote, ‘These happy times are over,’ and for the last years of her life she lived in fear that the soldiers of Napoleon, would arrive and loot her valuable art collection. Lucia, an invented character in my novel, is a young woman Angelica helps who is infatuated with the glamour and excitement of Napoleon and his sister, Princess Pauline Borghese, who was living in Rome. As a conservative Catholic Angelica detested both and mourned the old world that was being swept away by Napoleon. This argument runs throughout the novel. In Lucia’s unconventional spirit Angelica recognises a youth she missed:“She is the girl I trained myself not to be.”


   Like us, Angelica lived at a time of enormous change and was often bewildered by it. At the end of her life, still anxious to avoid scandal, she made a bonfire of most of her private papers. I’ve presumptuously tried to bring them back to life in my novel, Angelica Paintress of Minds, which is now out on kindle and will be published by Barbican Books in August.

Angelica Kauffman by Miranda Miller

   My eighth novel, Angelica, Paintress of Minds, will be published by Barbican Press in June. to coincide with an exhibition of her work at the Royal Academy.
   A few years ago I had the good fortune to be awarded a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship at the Courtauld Institute, then housed in Somerset House. I became fascinated by the history of the building itself and by the story of the foundation of the Royal Academy there in 1768. In the library, deep in the basement, I found two excellent books: James Fenton’s School of Genius, a wonderful introduction to the eighteenth century art world in London, and Angelica Gooden’s biography of Angelica Kauffman, Miss Angel. Until then I only knew her paintings from visits to Kenwood House.
   Angelica’s mother was Swiss and her father, an unsuccessful painter, was Austrian. She grew up in her father’s studio and he soon realised that she was immensely talented. He used to ask her not to sign her paintings and would pass them off as his own. Other successful painters, including Artemisia Gentileschi and Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, were also the daughters of painters; without such a background it was very hard for women to acquire an artistic education. Angelica was a prodigy, as can be seen from this self portrait she did when she was thirteen.

   In addition to being a talented artist Angelica had a beautiful singing voice. This painting dramatizes the decision she had to make in her youth to choose between painting and singing. All her life she performed as a good amateur singer and played the harpsichord. The great classical scholar Winckelmann said of her, ‘she sings with our best virtuosi.”

   After establishing herself as a painter in Italy Angelica came to London in 1766, when she was twenty-five. She became so successful that a word was coined, Angelicamad. She painted Queen Charlotte and other members of the royal family and her work was reproduced in engravings, as cameos by Wedgwood, on teapots and on Worcester, Meissen and Derby porcelain. The new invention of transfer printing made these items much cheaper and she gained an international reputation. Her popularity had a price; male artists could do as they liked but ‘paintresses’ always had to be decorous or risk losing their aristocratic patrons. Angelica was under enormous pressure to behave as ‘Miss Angel,’ the affectionate name her friend Joshua Reynolds gave her. Astonishingly, she was so well liked and respected that she survived the potential scandal of her first bigamous marriage to a fake Count. 

    I stared at this painting by Zoffany of the life drawing class in Old Somerset House and was intrigued to see that portraits of Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser were on the wall, staring down at the proceedings like ancestors. Although they were both alive and founder members of the Royal Academy, as women they were not allowed to attend life drawing classes there because respectable ladies were not supposed to look at a naked man.
   After fifteen triumphant and lucrative years in London, Angelica was terrified (as a  Catholic) by the Gordon Riots and she decided to return to Italy with her second husband, Zucchi, a Venetian artist.
    I discovered that Angelica spent her last twenty-five years in Rome, a city where I lived in my twenties and which I love. 

 
    In my novel Angelica, as an old lady, is living in her house at the top of the Spanish steps. As she looks back on her life she is afraid of the new century which is destroying the world she knew and finds herself isolated because her husband and most of her friends have died or left Rome. She has a valuable art collection and expects the soldiers of Napoleon, who she detests, to arrive at any minute and loot it.
   In her studio, Angelica stares at her self portraits and relives her journey from a poor background to international fame. She draws us into her fascinating past through her self portraits and the portraits she has painted of her friends, including Antonio Canova, Germaine de Stael, Emma Hamilton and Goethe. This is a novel about a gifted and powerful woman with a kind heart. Like us, she lives at a time of bewildering change and fears the unknown future.
   Slowly, my interest developed into a passionate engagement with Angelica and the many interesting people she painted and befriended. Every time I encountered a new name - Reynolds, Canova, Goethe, Madame de Stael and many more - I had to stop writing my novel and read a book, or several books, about them. Thanks to a generous grant from the Authors’ Foundation I was able to return to Rome and also to visit Weimar to learn more about Goethe, with whom I believe she was unrequitedly in love.   This is the portrait she did of him, which Goethe disliked because he didn't think it made him look heroic enough.

   In order to make a successful career as an artist Angelica had to battle against powerful waves of misogyny. Those battles are still being fought; it was not until 1936 that another woman, Laura Knight, was elected as an RA. Finally, generations of talented women artists are beginning to be recognised. This is the right moment to rediscover Angelica Kauffman’s life and work.