Hebe

Angelica Kauffmann (often Kauffman) spent only 15 years in England, but made a significant impact on the 18th-century London art scene, becoming one of only two female Founder Members of the Royal Academy and an all-time role model for women artists.

Born in Chur, Switzerland in 1741, Kauffmann was quickly recognised as a child prodigy. Her father, a painter himself, gave her drawing lessons from a young age as the family moved between Austria, Switzerland and Italy. In Italy she established a reputation as an artist and was elected a member of the Roman Accademia di San Luca at the age of 23. After moving to London in 1766, Kauffmann struck up a close friendship with Joshua Reynolds, commemorated in the portraits they painted of each other. When the Royal Academy of Arts was established in 1768 with Joshua Reynolds as President, she and Mary Moser were the only two women invited to become Founder Members.

Kauffmann painted portraits and landscapes, but identified herself primarily as a history painter, the genre Reynolds placed at the heart of the Academy’s teaching. During this period, women were still prohibited from drawing nude models and could only draw the male figure from existing casts, as Kauffmann depicts in Design. Long patronised in art history for being merely 'decorative', revisionist art history today regards Kauffmann's style as being an equally valid counterpart to the long dominant, austere and 'macho' Neo-classicism of her near contemporary Jacques Louis David. In architectural and furniture decoration, ceramics and hand-coloured stipple engraving, the Kauffmann aesthetic had a far greater reach in terms of the lifestyles of polite society than David's.

In 1778, Kauffmann was commissioned by the Royal Academy to paint a set of four ‘Elements of Art’, to be displayed in a new Council Chamber. A visual representation of the theories that Reynolds set out in his Discourses on Art, the four huge ceiling paintings present four female figures as Invention, Composition, Design and Colour. In her later years, Kauffmann retired to Rome, where she died in 1807. While her productivity somewhat declined, her reputation remained very high and her funeral was organised by the most famous artist in Rome, sculptor Antonio Canova. Soon after, a bust of Kauffman sculpted by her cousin Johann Peter Kauffmann was placed in the Pantheon in Rome, beside Raphael’s.

Between 1762 and 1779 Kauffmann created a total of 41 etchings, which together with engravings form the basis of Te Papa's collection. When she left London, she sold the plates to the publisher John Boydell, who had them reworked and reissued. In 1804 weaker prints were offered from the worn plates by the publisher John P. Thompson.

In Greek mythology, Hebe was the daughter of Zeus. She is often seen with her father in the guise of an eagle, often offering a cup to him, befitting her role as cup-bearer to the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus. In Kauffmann's etching, she is pouring wine or nectar into a shell for him to enjoy. Hebe is the goddess of youth; as well as signifying Zeus, the eagle is an important related attribute, as in ancient times it was widely believed that the eagle, like the phoenix, could renew itself into a youthful state.

Kauffmann's style stresses purity, simplicity and linearity, together with a perfect, unblemished profile. All these, and of course the theme, are key components of the fashionable Neo-classical aesthetic which became dominant in the late 18th century. But whereas David would often stress themes of courage, violence and death, Kauffmann significantly makes a heroine out of a dutiful daughter.

See:

AKRP (Angelika Kauffmann Research Project), 'Etchings', https://www.angelika-kauffmann.de/en/etchings/

Royal Academy,'Angelica Kauffman RA (1741-1807)',  https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/angelica-kauffman-ra

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art    August 2018