KAUFFMAN, ANGELICA. An original member of the London Academy.  She was essentially an Italian artist, since from the age of eleven she lived in Italy and there studied her art.  Such different estimates have been made of her works that one may quote a good authority in either praise or blame of her artistic genius and attainment.

Kugler, a learned, unimpassioned critic, says:  “An easy talent for composition, though of no depth; a feeling for pretty forms, though they were often monotonous and empty, and for graceful movement; a coloring blooming and often warm, though occasionally crude; a superficial but agreeable execution, and especially a vapid sentimentality in harmony with the fashion of the time—­all these causes sufficiently account for her popularity.”

[Illustration:  Alinari, Photo.

In the Uffizi, Florence

PORTRAIT OF ANGELICA KAUFFMAN

PAINTED BY HERSELF]

Raphael Mengs, himself an artist, thus esteems her:  “As an artist she is the pride of the female sex in all times and all nations.  Nothing is wanting—­composition, coloring, fancy—­all are here.”

Miss Kate Thompson writes:  “Her works showed no originality nor any great power of execution, and, while sometimes graceful, were generally weak and insipid.”

For myself I do not find her worthy of superlative praise or condemnation; one cannot deny her grace in design, which was also creditably correct; her poetical subjects were pleasing in arrangement; her historical subjects lacked strength and variety in expression; her color was as harmonious and mellow as that of the best Italian colorists, always excepting a small number of the greatest masters, and in all her pictures there is a something—­it must have been the individuality of the artist—­that leads one to entertain a certain fondness for her, even while her shortcomings are fully recognized.

The story of Angelica Kauffman’s life is of unusual interest.  She was born at Coire, in the Grisons. 1742-1807.  Her father, an artist, had gone from Schwarzenburg to Coire to execute some frescoes in a church, and had married there.  When Angelica was a year old the family settled in Morbegno, in Lombardy.  Ten years later, when the child had already shown her predilection for painting and music, a new home was made for her in Como, where there were better advantages for her instruction.

Her progress in music was phenomenal, and for a time she loved her two arts—­one as well as the other—­and could make no choice between them.  In one of her pictures she represented herself as a child, standing between allegorical figures of Music and Painting.

The exquisite scenery about Como, the stately palaces, charming villas, the lake with its fairy-like pleasure boats, and the romantic life which there surrounded this girl of so impressionable a nature, rapidly developed the poetic element born with her, which later found expression through her varied talents.  During her long life the recollections of the two years she passed at Como were among the most precious memories associated with her wandering girlhood.