Miss Angel

The Art and World of Angelica Kauffman, Eighteenth-Century Icon

Angelica Goodden

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'A riveting reappraisal. Angelica Goodden tells the story of Kauffman's sensational rise to fame in vivid detail with a wealth of new insight into the late eighteenth century European art world in which she operated with such élan. Best of all Goodden tackles the still controversial subject of Kauffman's real standing as an artist, posing the question 'Was she really worth it?' This skilful, perspicacious book convinces us she was.' Fiona MacCarthy

A word was coined to describe the condition of people stricken with a new kind of fever when the Swiss-born artist Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807) came to London in 1766. 'The whole world', it was said, 'is Angelicamad.'

One of the most successful women artists in history - a painter who possessed what her friend Goethe called an 'unbelievable' and 'massive' talent - Kauffman became the toast of Georgian England, captivating society with her portraits, mythological scenes and decorative compositions. She knew and painted poets, novelists and playwrights, collaborating with them and illustrating their work; her designs adorned the houses of the Grand Tourists she had met and painted in Italy; actors, statesmen, philosophers, kings and queen sat to her; and she was the force that launched a thousand engravings. Despite rumours of relationships with other artists (including Sir Joshua Reynolds), and an apparently bigamous and annulled first marriage to a pseudo Count, Kauffman was adopted by royalty in England and abroad as a model of social and artistic decorum.

A profoundly learned artist, but one who is loved, above all, for her tender adaptations from classical antiquity and sentimental literature; a commercially successful celebrity yet also a founding member of The Royal Academy of arts; the virginal creator of sexually ambivalent beings who was one of the hardest-headed businesswomen of her age, Kauffman's life and work is full of apparent contradictions explored in this first biography in over 80 years.

Published: 31 May 2011
ISBN: 9781446448359
Imprint: Vintage Digital
Format: EBook
Pages: 400

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About the author

Angelica Goodden

Angelica Goodden is a Fellow and Tutor of St Hilda's College, Oxford. As well as several books on literature and culture of eighteenth-century France, she is the author of the critically acclaimed biography of the painter Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun, The Sweetness of Life and Miss Angel.

Praise for Miss Angel

'I've read Miss Angel with enormous pleasure and admiration. A magnificent testimony to Angelica Kauffman. A fascinating read as you uncover, through her portraits, the characters of her myriad sitters - amongst them some of the leading figures of the later eighteenth century...It's brilliant.'
Lyndall Gordon

If Angelica Goodden is named after Angelica Kauffman, [Goodden] has fulfilled her destiny. This is an amusing and solid biography...[Goodden] shows that there was much more to Angelica's story than her art, and the market proves that the taste for her gentle pictures prevails despite the dismissal of puritanical critics.
John McEwen, Literary Review

One of [the eighteenth century's] more remarkable women...Kauffman deserves our admiration as much as Goodden merits thanks for bringing her impressive life to our attention.
Eva Jiricna RA, RA Magazine

Highly readable.
You Magazine, Mail on Sunday

Fascinating and thoroughly researched
Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday

Like an 18th-century Tracey Emin... she was a canny operator who capitalised on her image as a naif abroad in the fashionable world.
Financial Times

Refreshing... [Kauffman] was quite as celebrated as Emin, once upon a time - more so, in fact, since there was simply no one to touch her in her heyday.
Natasha Walter, Guardian

A riveting reappraisal. Angelica Goodden tells the story of Kauffman's sensational rise to fame in vivid detail with a wealth of new insight into the late eighteenth century European art world in which she operated with such élan. Best of all Goodden tackles the still controversial subject of Kauffman's real standing as an artist, posing the question 'Was she really worth it?' This skilful, perspicacious book convinces us she was.
Fiona MacCarthy