The 18th century painter Angelica Kauffman was an artist altogether of her age – but she had one very modern attribute: she was a terrific promoter of her brand. She painted many self-portraits, of which this exhibition at the Royal Academy has several, calculated to show off her talent to its most lucrative advantage. Contemporaries knew what to make of her with a bust of Minerva, goddess of Wisdom, or in the Character of Design Listening to the Inspiration of Poetry.
She could protect her brand too. When the Irish painter Nathaniel Hone painted a satirical picture of a Conjurer (playing with the RA’s president Sir Joshua Reynolds’ reputation for recycling Old Master motifs), she took umbrage at being identified with the little girl at his knee – and possibly with the female figure with an easel in the background, wearing nothing but black stockings. She wrote to the Royal Academy to demand the withdrawal of the picture and threatening to withhold her own work; she won.
