Most of us assume that super stardom is a phenomenon of the last
century, a product of the mass media catapulting actors, musicians,
writers and other creative types into the public arena via branding
through television, film, the Internet and tabloid-gorged pop culture.
Though we're regularly bombarded with the ventures and visages of
contemporary idols, both ersatz and authentic, and it all seems
singularly moderne and cutting edge, it's not.
If we consider such ubiquitous marketing tactics to be the hallmark of post-industrial revolution communications, how then do we explain 18th-century neo-classical painting sensation and cultural über-icon, Angelica Kauffman, who had a similarly diverse and widespread impact on European society that women like Madonna, Oprah and Di have had on ours?
Though her fame wasn't manifest in the form of music videos, magazines, haute couture or talk shows, in the context of the late 1700s, Kauffman was, for all intents and purposes, Fortune 500, rock-star royalty. Her intellect and charisma was renowned and her imagery infiltrated elite echelons and everyday life in the form of lampshades, fans, calendars, architectural design, interior décor and teacups, which is all to say, she was an omni-mediated Martha Stewart in her own time.
Quoting
an engraver of the day who was overwhelmed with orders for Kauffman
prints, Dartmouth art history professor and Kauffman scholar, Angela
Rosenthal, attests that, "The whole world was Angelica-mad." And
Rosenthal — who will be delivering what is sure to be an absorbing
presentation on Kauffman Wednesday at Brooks Memorial Library in
Brattleboro — is the person to ask.
With a new, handsome 350-page book out — "Angelica Kauffman: Art and Sensibility," which just won this year's Historians of British Art prize in the pre-1800 category — Rosenthal is a fountain of details, personal and professional, about her subject, as well as captivating contextual insights that illuminate the academic and social climate in which Kauffman's star rose so dramatically.
When we spoke earlier this week, I was curious as to how it was possible that a woman born in 1741 could have possibly enjoyed such a successful career — which included painting portraits of kings and queens and establishing the Royal College of Art in London — when 150 years later women still were not being admitted to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Apparently, it pertained more to a serendipitous and somewhat esoteric shift in socio-cultural ideals than a sudden wave of progressive thinking. "This age of sensibility was associated with private, feminine virtues, emotionality and the language of the heart," explained Rosenthal. "Women were considered the experts of these virtues in that time and Kauffman was a skilled artist, a great businesswoman and very sociable. When people sat for her, they also wanted to talk to her."
Born in Switzerland, Kauffman lost her mother at age 16, and thereafter followed her Austrian father, a traveling painter, back to Italy, where she'd already spent much of her childhood studying ancient Greek statuary and masters of the Renaissance. She eventually fell in with the English "grand tour" crowd and, soon after being welcomed into Rome's Academy of St. Luke at age 22, she moved to London, where her reputation as an extraordinarily skilled painter and sublime conversationalist preceded her.
"She had already painted leading Shakespeare interpreter, mega-celebrity of the day, David Garrick," said Rosenthal. "She was known as 'the painter of Garrick.'" In those days, such accolades that linked artists to beloved figures of the stage or throne heralded immediate almost rabid adoration by the teeming masses
As one critic phrased it, Kauffman "burst upon the hemisphere of painting as a luminous wonder," with her widely celebrated romantic aesthetic, whose glowing palette and romantic subject matter seemed to intoxicate the viewing public, including royalty.
Her faithful reinterpretations of classical figures, grouped together using ancient devices of composition, poses and gesture, were set against verdant backgrounds and incorporated symbolic elements such as lyres, lambs and scrolls (the arts, innocence and education, respectively).
Kauffman's soft, peaceful portraits were not simply poetic odes to beauty and nature, they reflected the aesthetics and values of the period in pivotal ways that served to challenge the perception of gender roles and relations.
"Later in the 18th century, we had 'men of feeling,'" expounds Rosenthal. "It was a sentimental culture when the female voice appeared in literature with Samuel Richardson's novel "Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded" and it transformed rough masculinity. Toughness and violence did not reign but, instead, emotional depth."
Even in light of this cultural swell toward the feminine perspective, Kauffman's monumental academic and professional accomplishments remain remarkable today when one considers that it was an age when few women achieved great success or distinction.
Rosenthal finds the evolution and impact of Kauffman's achievements entirely pertinent to societal obstacles and inner messages with which women continue to wrestle today. "If it is held to be somehow something that women don't do, then women themselves hold this mores. It is a mentality of the time that we enforce — not just men who prohibit women from doing what they want to do, but the whole patriarchal culture. Certainly, Kauffman tried to negotiate this, she was trying to please and the ideal of femininity was regarded of the arbiter of this taste."
"German poet Johann Gottfried von Herder called Kauffman 'the most cultivated person in Europe,'" continued Rosenthal. "So if she had intelligent people sitting for portraits, she had to be polished, speak different languages, be charming and flattering without being too submissive. In portraiture you're on equal footing because the sitter is vulnerable in the hands of the artist and that equation was loaded in the 18th century."
Considering the stature of Kauffman's subjects, this dynamic must have been particularly thrilling for her and propelled her career forward at an unprecedented clip, into uncharted territory. "When Queen Charlotte sat for Kauffman," affirmed Rosenthal, "her patronage instantly went up."
Kauffman was at the center of a vibrant intellectual milieu populated not only by wealthy patrons and monarchs, but by fellow female achievers of the day. "She cultivated relationships with a fantastic series of creative women and she made monumental portraits, almost female Temples of the Muses, or Parnassus. Women would sit for Kauffman because she was this cultured woman with a heightened sensibility."
Eighteenth-century English painter James Northcote encapsulated Kauffman's influence more than 200 years ago in a letter he wrote to her dearest friend and colleague, Sir Joshua Reynolds, in which he said Kauffman had become synonymous with successful women in the arts.
Rosenthal considers the lessons in Kauffman's remarkable professional trajectory to be entirely germane to the continuing need for contemporary girls and women to be inspired and challenged. "It's important for 21st-century women to know about women of the past," she said. "It's great to see powerful, creative women who succeeded and contributed fundamentally to the culture."
At last year's bicentennial commemoration of her death, Kauffman's achievements were once again lauded when Austria went all out to honor its favorite female artisan and Rosenthal was clearly moved by the enthusiasm accorded her longtime academic subject.
"At the opening celebration, there were 800 invited guests, plus a documentary film about her and they put her portrait on the Austrian shilling and a new stamp," marveled Rosenthal, who delivered a talk at the event. "She's a national hero there."
In describing the festivities, Rosenthal reflected candidly on her own joy at seeing Kauffman so deservingly lionized. "Sometimes scholarship is a lonely endeavor between you and the work of art, so this was astonishing for me."
Angelica Kauffman's achievements are astonishing to anyone who explores them, as is Rosenthal's wisdom and zeal on the topic. Take advantage of her remarkable expertise by heading to Brooks Library on Wednesday — and bring your daughters.
Online: www.brooks.lib.vt.us
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