Kauffman’s paintings have never sold for more than $1 million at auction, and her art has rarely been the subject of major shows. Though art historian Linda Nochlin named Kauffman as one of the many female masters of yesteryear in her famed 1971 essay for ARTnews “ Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?“, her important contributions remained underrecognized. Yet, in the centuries since, Kauffman has generally received less attention than her male Neoclassical colleagues such as Reynolds, Canova, and Jacques-Louis David.
Philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder once called Kauffman “possibly the most cultivated woman in Europe.” In fact, she even became so popular that her studio became a stop on the Grand Tour, a trip through Europe that was considered an educational rite of passage for upper-class men. During her day, Kauffman, who was born in Chur, Switzerland, in 1741 and was based in London and Rome for much of her life, was considered a key artist of the Neoclassicism movement, which revived Greco-Roman artistic tropes as part of an Enlightenment-era push for rationality and reason during the 18th century. Nevertheless, Kauffman maintained a powerful social network that included theorist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and sculptor Antonio Canova (who later oversaw aspects of her funeral in 1807), and she saw unusual market success for a female artist of her era.
She was often plagued with allegations that she had romantic liaisons with famous male artists-Nathaniel Hone once satirized her close friendship with artist Joshua Reynolds, portraying Kauffman as his plaything the painting was rejected by the Royal Academy amid an outcry. And this was not the only one she was forced to weather over the course of her career, which lasted for almost half a century. Having been the go-to painter for the British aristocracy, Kauffman was the most famous portraitist in 18th-century Europe-male or female-and Zoffany’s scene would have been construed as an insult.
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