Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at the life and work of one of its two female founding members, Angelica Kauffman. At first sight the information in this show seemed sparse but if you took time to read the labels you found some charming stories which lifted the art for example a painting of “Christ and the Samarian Woman” in the show was carried at her funeral which was organised by Canova. I liked her portraits best including the numerous self-portraits. Her portrait of Joshua Reynolds showed him as a real, relatable person and I loved the detail on her portrait of a woman in Turkish dress. The allegorical and historical works felt overblown to contemporary taste however I found her comparable in style and technique to her contemporaries. It was nice that the Zoffany group portrait of the early members was included albeit that Kauffman and Mary Moser are only shown as pictures on the wall as it is set in the life drawing room where they were not allowed to...

Delightful exhibition at Tate Britain looking at Angelica Kauffman, one of the two female founding members of the Royal Academy to mark its 250th anniversary.   The show looked at Kauffman’s art and how she was treated by the art establishment. To a modern eye her work is a bit sweet but it is very much of its time. The commentary suggested she was exploring gender and identity but I’m not sure I saw that in the work although I did like the confident self-portraits. There was a good selection of work and the pictures were shown against beautiful blue walls which gave them a sense of period.   It was a nice idea to include a projection of an engraving of a lost picture shown at the size of the original. A lot of Kauffman’s work was history paintings but this is under represented in galleries.   There were also sketches for the ceilings she designed for original Royal Academy, now the Courtauld. My favourite picture was a stunning chalk portrait of Benjamin We...