2023-06-28 15:57:41
Swiss neoclassical artist
Sharjah: Osman Hassan
Maria Angelica Kaufmann (1741 – 1807), a Swiss artist, counted on the neoclassical school, known as a successful and well-known painter in London and Rome. Remembered primarily as a history painter, she was skilled in portraiture, landscape, and decoration. Kaufmann was born in Graubünden, Switzerland. Her family moved to Morbino, Italy in 1742, then Como, Italy in 1752, which was under Austrian rule.
In 1757, Kaufmann accompanied her father, Joseph Johann Kaufmann, to Schwarzenberg, Austria. Her father was a rather poor man, but a talented artist traveling around selling his paintings, who trained Angelica, who worked as his assistant, in the arts of painting. The two moved through Switzerland, Austria, and Italy. She was described as a child prodigy, due to her skill in drawing, and also because she acquired from her mother Clevia Lutz a love of learning languages, so she mastered German, Italian, French and English. She also showed an innate talent as a musician and singer, and was forced to choose between opera and painting. She soon chose art, following being told by a Catholic priest that the opera was a dangerous place full of “bad people”.
In 1754, her mother died, and her father decided to move to Milan. Subsequent visits to Italy followed for extended periods. She became a member of the Florence Academy of Fine Arts in 1762. It was in Florence that she discovered for the first time the style of painting according to the neoclassical school that was in vogue in Europe in the eighteenth century. In 1763, Kaufmann was introduced to the British community Rome, while she was continuing to learn English and also practice painting, the family moved once more to Naples. There Kaufman studied the works of the Old Masters, and sent one of her first paintings to a public exhibition in London. Then she wandered between Rome, Bologna, and Venice, and everywhere celebrated her talents and charms.
Among Kaufman’s famous paintings is an oasis entitled: (A personal portrait, the artist’s confusion between painting and music), which she completed in 1792, when she was fifty years old.
The previous painting is of a young woman wearing a clean and shiny white dress, standing between two female figures who represent the embodiment of the arts of painting and music. The scene depicts the dilemma of the young Swiss artist, Angelica Kaufman, who is experiencing moments of confusion and hesitation regarding the talent that she should seek following, which is a critical period that Kaufman lived through, and posed a rigorous challenge for her.
The painting embodies the dilemma that the artist faced at the beginning of her career, which is the dilemma of her hesitation in choosing the appropriate profession for her between her talents in drawing and music, especially since the profession of art was a profession dominated by males in most cases.
The music was embodied by a female figure representing the artist on the left side, as this character looks obliquely or convincingly at Kaufman, holds her hand, and gently approaches her. The artist wears a clean, shiny white dress, while the character representing the drawing tries to woo the artist away from the character who embodies the music, and enthusiastically refers to the drawing, towards a classical temple high on a distant hill, in reference to that difficult journey that awaits the artist, but it is without a doubt A tempting journey, but it promises the artist a seductive intellectual reward that is worth it, and translates her journey into the world of visual arts.
* Fame
Because of the great fame that met the painting, it was transmitted by a large number of artists even years following the artist’s death. He acquired the painting, the English Baron St. Oswald, in 1908, following he bought it from the “Strickland” group. The painting was gifted by the artist Kaufman to the artist. James Forbes.
Kauffman worked with artist Robert Adam on the decoration of Nostell Hall. Nostell is one of the great treasure houses in the North of England, home to countless treasures, stories and secrets. The painting remained in Nostel’s upper room until 1939.. Another copy of the painting is today in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow.
*Cash
The art critic Winckelmann refers to the popularity enjoyed by Kaufmann as a painter, intellectual, and fluent in more than one language. He says: “She spoke Italian and German and expressed herself easily in French and English. Roma,” he adds, “she looks tender and beautiful, and in singing she may compete with our best talents.”
In London, her work appeared in an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, shortly following her name was established as a leading artist, and in 1911, rooms decorated with her work were still seen in various places, in the royal palace, Hampton Court in London, and her portraits were shown in Paris, and in Dresden-Germany, in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, in Munich, in Kadriorg Palace in Estonia, and undoubtedly in the Uffizi in Florence. A few of her works have been shown in private collections among the Old Masters at Burlington House.
*books
A biography of Kaufmann was published in 1810 by the famous Italian artist and biographer Giovanni Gerardo de Rossi (1754 – 1827), this biography-turned-book edited by Leon de Wailey in 1838, and published in Conhill’s Magazine in 1875 by writer Anne Isabella Thackeray Titled: “Angel of Beauty.” As for the novelist Miranda Miller, she wrote a novel regarding Angelica Kaufman entitled: “The Painter of Minds,” which included documentation of the artist’s life in her final days in Rome. ».
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