Sarah Pickstone on the legacy of Angelica Kauffman RA

The contemporary artist and RA Schools alum discusses her recent project at the Royal Academy, investigating the life and work of a pioneering 18th-century artist and founding member of the RA.

Sarah Pickstone standing in front of 'The Rainbow', part of her project, 'An Allegory of Painting' (2019)Royal Academy of Arts

Artist and RA Schools alumna Sarah Pickstone has created a valentine to Angelica Kauffman, one of the most important painters of the 18th century and one of the RA’s founders.

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Pickstone's paintings are based on her studies of Kauffman’s four-part Elements of Art series. Here's one of those four works, hanging in the RA's Collection Gallery...

Colour (1778/1780) by Angelica Kauffman RARoyal Academy of Arts

And the other three are in the ceiling of the RA's entrance foyer – but you can look at them here without getting neck-ache...

Invention (1778/1780) by Angelica Kauffman RARoyal Academy of Arts

Composition (1778/1780) by Angelica Kauffman RARoyal Academy of Arts

Photograph of the making of Sarah Pickstone's 'An Allegory of Painting' (2018)Royal Academy of Arts

Let's hear more from Pickstone on her time researching this extraordinary woman.

Kauffman Angelica PainterLIFE Photo Collection

“Angelica Kauffman was a force of nature: a hugely successful artist in her day and much celebrated in Britain, her home for 15 years.”

Self-portrait (1770) by Angelica Kauffman RARoyal Academy of Arts

"I really tried to get a sense of her being in the world as a woman artist and as a continental European artist at that time. Born in Chur in Switzerland, she came to London in 1766 full of expertise from her experience and education studying classical sculpture and Renaissance painting throughout Italy. Her father was a clerical painter and she travelled with him from an early age after the death of her mother. Her reputation as an artist was quickly recognised in Italy and she was held in great esteem as a young painter, until her death, in Rome in 1807."

Self-portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds, PRA (c.1780) by Joshua ReynoldsRoyal Academy of Arts

“And then she arrives in London. She became good friends with the artist Joshua Reynolds RA, whose lectures and publications on the Discourses of Art are the foundation of this series by Kauffman. The four roundels that make up Elements of Art are about those ideas of what makes good art: invention, composition, drawing, and colour. I like to imagine Kauffman contributed to shaping Reynolds's discourses, because of her experience and classical education in Italy. She would have been part of the studio conversation, the banter, part of the discourse.”

Photograph of the making of Sarah Pickstone's 'An Allegory of Painting' (2018)Royal Academy of Arts

"I read a lot about Kauffman over the course of the project and visited her father’s home in Schwarzenberg, Austria. I had a strong sense of her."

Colour (1778/1780) by Angelica Kauffman RARoyal Academy of Arts

"I started with drawing. I was looking at the paintings in the RA’s store while they were down from the ceiling. Up-close you can see the screw-holes at the edges, the white highlights in the eyes, the flesh-tones, and mistakes that have been painted over."

Photograph of the making of Sarah Pickstone's 'An Allegory of Painting' (2018)Royal Academy of Arts

"When I started drawing from the paintings, I realised they were full of colour; I couldn’t get the HB pencil out so I borrowed my daughter’s crayons. Kauffman structures things very much from a colourist’s point of view."

Photograph of the making of Sarah Pickstone's 'An Allegory of Painting' (2018)Royal Academy of Arts

“Her paintings feel really fluid, so I took the drawings back to the studio and translated them with watercolours.”

Sarah Pickstone working on 'An Allegory of Painting' at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2019)Royal Academy of Arts

"Then I started this huge painting and I had visions of it being much more abstract but it just wouldn’t work. I had a strong sense it needed to be more like Kauffman’s painting as though she was saying 'Come on - whose painting is this after all?' So it’s ended up being much more figurative than anything I’d usually do: there are flesh tones, everything’s in proportion. We were in debate with each other, and I lost."

Sarah Pickstone working on 'An Allegory of Painting' (2019)Royal Academy of Arts

"The project felt very real, very urgent - it really helped to have Kauffman at my shoulder saying let’s do this!"

Design (1778/1780) by Angelica KauffmanRoyal Academy of Arts

“It’s really important the space that women take up; the space that any artist takes up. It doesn’t matter if it’s tiny. There’s nothing inherently good about big spaces or taking up a lot of room. It’s something I talk to students about a lot: make a decision about the space you take up in your work.”

Installation view of Sarah Kauffman's 'An Allegory of Painting' at the Royal Academy of Arts (2019)Royal Academy of Arts

“Everyone can learn to draw, it is the most democratic of media – no costs and no rules. The attention any one of us gives to making and seeing helps generate ideas that feed back into politics, economics, the sciences and arts. For me, Kauffman’s Elements of Art offer a strong image of this artistic identity, in praise of those who make art everywhere.”

Coriolanus: "The God of Soldiers, to shame invulnerable..." (Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act 5) (November 3, 1785) by Francesco Bartolozzi|Angelica Kauffmann|James Birchall|William ShakespeareThe Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Kauffman disseminated her work very successfully through prints; she was a great entrepreneur."

Edward Smith Stanley (1752–1834), Twelfth Earl of Derby, with His First Wife (Lady Elizabeth Hamilton, 1753–1797) and Their Son (Edward Smith Stanley, 1775–1851) (ca. 1776) by Angelica KauffmannThe Metropolitan Museum of Art

"She is probably best known for her portraits of royalty, aristocracy and prestigious commissions...

The Sorrow of Telemachus (1783) by Angelica KauffmannThe Metropolitan Museum of Art

...as well as major paintings from history and mythology...

Pair of doors with scenes after Angelica Kauffman Pair of doors with scenes after Angelica Kauffman (after 1784) by Angelica KauffmannThe Metropolitan Museum of Art

...but she also made furniture decorations...

Design for Ceiling: Apollo and the Hours (1760–1807) by Angelica Kauffmann|Giovanni Battista CiprianiThe Metropolitan Museum of Art

...ceiling decorations...

Virgins Awaking Cupid (ca. 1780) by William Wynne Ryland|Angelica Kauffmann|Derby Porcelain ManufactoryThe Metropolitan Museum of Art

...and sculptures to decorate houses – among other things."

Kauffman Angelica PainterLIFE Photo Collection

"She was such a flexible artist, perhaps in part due to financial necessity. Subsequent generations of male critics judged her harshly and dismissed her work as a purely decorative. I think much was lost of her practice and reputation."

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"History – how things are written down and who gets to preserve the story – is so important. We’re putting her back in the place that she deserves."

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