Back to the Crossroads

Angelica Kauffman, Self Portrait at the Crossroads between the Arts of Music and Painting, 1794. National Trust Collections, Nostell Priory, West Yorkshire.

This Monday, 11 March, I will talk about the Royal Academy’s long-awaited exhibition Angelica Kauffman. And to introduce that, I am re-posting an entry from the early days of this blog – ‘day 14’ to be precise. I know that, because it says so. I started posting on my Facebook Page (and still do…), but then transferred it onto WordPress (which is why I gave the original date of posting). I’ve posted about Kauffman since, but wanted to re-visit this particular entry because at the time I was already looking forward to this exhibition. My attitude is a reminder of just how optimistic – or maybe naïve – we all were that a global pandemic might easily blow over in a couple of months. I would write about this painting differently now – but have left the text as it was, although with the addition of some more details of the painting (easier to format with WordPress than Facebook…). In the heading above I have used the title for the painting which is used in the exhibition, Self Portraint at the Crossroads Between the Arts of Music and Painting, although four years ago it was called Self Portrait Hesitating Between the Arts of Music and Painting – you’ll be able to see why it has changed below. The following week (18 March) I will continue my Stroll around the Walker with a talk entitled The Virgin and Child… and other relatives, before taking a week out to move. I hope I’ll be moving then, it’s still not 100% certain. On Monday 1 April (four years after today’s post was originally published) I will talk about Frederic Leighton and Flaming June – currently the focus of two small, free, but un-heralded displays at the Royal Academy and Leighton House. Two In Person Tours next week have one place available each as a result of cancelations – see the diary – and soon I will also post details of the May IPTs… Meanwhile, let’s see how positive I was being when we were a mere ten days into lockdown (the blog having started four days before that).

‘day 14’

Originally posted on 1 April 2020

Two weeks of #pictureoftheday already! Thank you so much for all your ‘likes’, comments, queries, requests, and ‘shares’ – yes! Especially for the ‘shares’, keep on doing that, I’d be so happy if even more people could get to read these ramblings. And if there’s anything you’d like me to cover, please ask!

That’s what I’m doing today – a request – for art by a woman. It shouldn’t be a request, I know. I should have done it already, and will do more in the future! And yes, I know I could have jumped straight in with Artemisia, but by now everyone knows about her (that won’t stop me in future, though), and it is really sad that the opening of the National Gallery’s exhibition has been delayed: let’s just hope it doesn’t get cancelled altogether. Another exhibition I’m really looking forward to is Angelica Kauffman at the Royal Academy. As it’s due to open on 27 June [2020], I suppose there is still some hope it could open on time.

Kauffman was a wonderful artist, as I hope today’s painting shows, and a very clever woman – which I hope you will understand by the time I’ve finished. She was born in Chur, in Switzerland, which a Swiss friend of mine once spent a very long time trying to persuade me not to visit. I went all the same, and it wasn’t that bad, to be honest, but I probably wouldn’t rush back. I do want to go at some point, though, as their museum was being refurbished, and I missed the Kauffmans. Kauffmen? Not that there should be that many there – the family moved to Morbegno (in Italy) when she was one, and then moved again (to Como) ten years later. She was trained by her father, and assisted him from the age of 12. She moved to London in 1764, by which time she was 23. She rapidly became a hugely successful portraitist, and in 1768 was one of only two women to be founder members of the Royal Academy. But she was not just a painter of pretty faces – she spoke German, Italian, French and English, and the subject matter of today’s painting shows she was well educated in other ways too.

It shows her, as the title tells us, ‘hesitating between the Arts of Music and Painting’. She is central, in white, with her body facing towards us. Not only is she making sure we do not miss her by taking up as much of the painting as she can, with her shoulders full width across the surface, and her gestures taking up just a little bit more space, but the white makes her figure ring out from the darker background and the rich colours of the allegorical characters. It also gives her a higher moral status – white makes her look virtuous – while unifying the composition by matching the white of Music’s chemise and the off-white of the score on her lap, together with the headdress of Painting. One of the techniques used to balance Music and Painting on either side of Ms Kauffman is dressing them both – at least partially – in red. 

Music is relaxed, and seated, looking towards the artist with a winning gaze, which is returned. She pulls the artist’s right hand – the hand Kauffman paints with – towards her. Meanwhile, Painting looks concerned, almost anxious. She points towards a temple atop a steep hill in the top right-hand corner of the painting. If you look back to Music, you will realise that the diagonal of the hill, and the pointing arm, actually starts in the score, undulating across Music’s knees and echoed by Kauffman’s right arm. 

The artist’s left hand points towards the palette, which has four dabs of paint on it – there’s not a lot there, as if work has only just begun. We see mustard yellow, ochre, red, and – a dark burgundy? The mustard yellow and red seem to be the colours of Painting’s clothes – the darker versions for the shadows maybe – with the hint that Painting herself has only just begun: there is more work still to do. Painting is not finished. What is missing from the palette, then, is the blue of her dress. Is it fanciful to imagine that she wears this blue robe in the same way that Mary does in so much Christian art – because it was the most expensive pigment and became associated with the most important person in the painting? What is certainly true is that Painting is wearing red, yellow and blue – the three primary colours – everything that painting is made of. But is she the most important? Or, of the two arts, is she more important than Music? We know the choice Kauffman would make, as we know her as an artist. She knows it too, and so, I think, does Music. Why else would she clasp that right hand so tightly, while Kauffman gestures to the palette with a look of compassionate regret on her face? Music is being rejected.

A lovely idea, but it’s cleverer than that. It is a direct reference to classical mythology, and particularly to a subject called Hercules at the Crossroads: here is Annibale Carracci’s painting of the subject from 1596.

Xenophon of Athens, writing some time in the 4^th century BCE, tells us that, as a young man, Hercules was faced with a choice between Virtue and Vice – should he take the hard, upward road, a life of toil and responsibility which would eventually lead to glory, or should he opt for an easy life of pleasure and enjoyment (i.e. going to the theatre and listening to music with a woman in a see-through skirt, by the look of it). Shakespeare was clearly aware of this parable, and, changing the context, gives the following words to Ophelia, after her brother Laertes has told her to be virtuous:

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads…

The parable was well known in 18^th century England. Kauffman’s great friend was Joshua Reynolds, first president of the Royal Academy (was her admission a rare case of Jobs for the Girls?) and he had adapted it in 1760-61 for his portrait showing David Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy.

For Garrick, the implication is that Tragedy is hard, but leads to glory, whereas comedy is easy (well, look at her), and fun. This was painted a few years before Kauffman arrived in London, but she may well have seen it – after all, the first of her portraits to be exhibited in London was of Garrick (see below). This idea, with the sitter peering over the back of a chair, was invented by Frans Hals [yes, I’ve edited this sentence], and would be picked up later by Reynolds – presumably inspired by Kauffman. Many years later, a more extreme version would be used in a photograph of Christine Keeler.

Despite all of this, Angelica’s self portrait is not drawn directly from Reynolds. Look at Painting’s hand pointing up to the Temple of Art, and compare it with Virtue’s right hand in the Carracci – it’s far more like that.

Hercules at the Crossroads comes from the Farnese Collection in Rome, but it was moved to Parma in 1662, so even though Kauffman moved to Rome in 1782, 12 years before painting her self portrait, she probably hadn’t seen the Carracci first hand [I could well have been wrong back in 2020, though – the Farnese collection was moved again, to Naples, in 1736. Even though she settled in Rome in 1782, she was invited south to Naples that same year by Queen Maria Carolina (Marie Antoinette’s sister), where she painted an enormous Portrait of Ferdinand IV of Naples and his Family. She may well have taken that opportunity to see the King’s collection. However, be that as it may…] Given that Virtue and Painting are on opposite sides of their respective images, I wonder if she had taken the idea from a print, where the gesture would have been reversed? This does not imply that she lacked invention – quoting from the work of others was a way of signalling that you knew about their art, acknowledged it, and, if you did it well, ‘owned’ it. You were part of that world. As Picasso is supposed to have said (though I doubt that he did), ‘Good artists copy. Great artists steal’. Wherever she got that gesture, she is saying one thing, and saying it rather clearly at that. As far as she is concerned music comes easily to her, and, much as she liked ‘her’, for Angelica it was a case of ‘I’m sorry, it’s not you, it’s me…’ So Music is deserted in favour of Painting. Painting is hard, but painting is rewarding, and painting will win her a place in the Temple of Art. A little bit of false modesty perhaps, but being an artist was never easy, and even harder – especially hard – if you were a woman. She had to fight for everything she could get. Women were denied an artistic training because it was thought they didn’t have the necessary intellect, let alone the necessary education. It really helped having a father who was an artist, but even with that training she still goes all out to say, ‘Not only can I do this, but I do know the Classics, and I also know about European art’. She definitely deserves her place in the Temple of Art – let’s just hope we get to see that exhibition!

[When the exhibition was cancelled – rather than postponed – a few months later, it seemed likely that it would never see the light of day. However, four years after I posted this, the RA is finally paying an appropriate tribute to one of its founder members. Trust me, it was worth the wait: I do hope you can join me on Monday. As a post script, here is Kauffman’s signature, painted on her own belt.]