Angelica Kauffman

Angelica Kauffman RA, Design, 1780, Royal Academy, London. © Royal Academy of Arts, London. Photo: John Hammond

Angelica Kauffman RA was one of the most celebrated artists of the 18th century. This exhibition - the Royal Academy’s first major solo exhibition dedicated to a pre-modern female artist - traces her trajectory from child prodigy to one of Europe's most sought-after painters.

Known for her celebrity portraits and pioneering history paintings, Angelica Kauffman helped to shape the direction of European art. She painted some of the most influential figures of her day – queens, countesses, actors and socialites – and she reinvented the genre of history painting by focusing largely on female protagonists from classical history and mythology.

This exhibition covers Kauffman’s life and work: her rise to fame in London, her role as a founding member of the Royal Academy and her later career in Rome where her studio became a hub for the city’s cultural life.

See paintings and preparatory drawings by Kauffman, including some of her finest self-portraits, her celebrated ceiling paintings for the Royal Academy’s first home in Somerset House, as well as history paintings of subjects including Circe and Cleopatra, and discover the remarkable life of the artist whom one of her contemporaries described as “the most cultivated woman in Europe”.