ANGELICA KAUFFMAN AT ATTINGHAM PARK 33
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Bacchus and Ariadne, 1794, Angelica Kauffman, oil on canvas, 246.4 x 165.1cm, Attingham Park,
Shropshire. Photo: © National Trust Images/Derrick E. Whitty the austro-swiss painter angelica kauffman (1741– 1807) was not only a leading artistic figure in Georgian London, but was also internationally renowned.1 One of only two female founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768, she was described in 1789 by her friend the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder as ‘perhaps the most highly cultured woman in Europe’.2 Her knowledge of art, music and languages, combined with her business acumen, brought her great success. The collection at Attingham Park, Shropshire, contains a distinguished group of her paintings commissioned by the second Lord Berwick during his Grand Tour of Italy in the early 1790s (Fig. 3). This article revisits the history of these important pictures using hitherto unpublished sources.
Thomas Noel Hill, second Lord Berwick (1770–1832), inherited Attingham at the age of 18 following the death of his father in January 1789. The large neoclassical Palladian building, with a central block linked by colonnades to a pair of wings, was begun in 1782 to a design by the Scottish architect George Steuart. At the time Lord Berwick inherited it, the house remained unfinished and largely unfurnished.3 In 1794, Katherine Plymley of neighbouring Longnor Hall, Shropshire, commented:
It is a vast pile of building, built at great expense by the late Lord, who died very soon after it was completed, before some of the apartments were quite finished, it has scarcely been inhabited by the family
