Two women were among the 34 artists who founded the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768 – not that you would know it from Johan Zoffany’s notorious group portrait of the founders in breeches and periwigs. The scene is a life drawing class, arranged around a naked male model. The artists are all busy observation and natter, except for the two excluded women. Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, instigators of the very life classes from which they were banned, are present only as a pair of sketchy canvases – two pale spectres tacked to the wall.
Kauffman (1741-1807) has had to wait a long time to return to the institution she co-founded, but the Royal Academy has organised an elegant and selective exhibition that does not overstate her gifts. Born in Switzerland, apprenticed early to her father, Kauffman found fame across Europe for portraits, self-portraits and history paintings. Her social network was second to none. Arriving in London in her 20s, fresh from painting the German art historian Winckelmann, pen in hand, she portrayed actors, socialites, aristocrats and eventually the monarchy, before retiring to the continent, where Goethe was a client. The sculptor Antonio Canova organised her enormous funeral in Rome.
