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34  ANGELICA KAUFFMAN AT ATTINGHAM PARK 3 FIG 3 The Drawing Room at Attingham Park, Shropshire with three paintings by Angelica Kauffman above and on either side of the chimneypiece Photo: © National Trust Images/Andreas von Einsiedel FIG 4 Self-portrait, 1787, Angelica Kauffman, oil on canvas, 111.8 x 87cm, Cobbe Collection, Hatchlands Park, Surrey Photo: courtesy the Cobbe Collection 4 is employing Angelica Kauffman in painting and I am now selecting passages from the poets for her to paint for his house at Attingham.10 yet, the present Lord though fond of it, having hitherto been principally abroad – the sum it cost I am told was certainly not less than £50,000.4 Some of the Adam-style ceilings already incorporated ceiling roundels after designs by Kauffman.5 Her work also influenced the friezes of the Drawing Room and Boudoir chimneypieces by John Devall the Younger (1728–94), made in around 1785.6 Kauffman arrived in England in 1766 and was immediately successful as an exhibitor of history paintings and portraits. The dissemination of her designs via engravings and so-called ‘mechanical paintings’ extended her reputation and her work had become highly fashionable by the 1780s.7 In June 1792, the second Lord Berwick, after graduating from Cambridge, embarked on a Grand Tour to Italy.8 His tutor (or ‘bear leader’) was his university friend Edward Daniel Clarke, who later became Cambridge’s first professor of mineralogy.9 Clarke had a dual function: to guide Berwick on his tour and to advise him on the purchase of works of art and antiquities for the incomplete house. Soon after their arrival in Rome in November 1792, Clarke wrote: My time has been taken up in visiting the artists, for we have been here three weeks comparing their works, and in taking the opinions of the oldest and best judges – except where it was mere party matter, and then I ventured to act from my own opinion […] Lord Berwick In spite of the French Revolutionary Wars, tourists continued to make their way to Italy and commission paintings. Kauffman had returned to Italy in 1781, following 15 successful years in London. She quickly became part of Rome’s artistic and cultural community and her studio, located near the Spanish Steps, was a meeting place for the social and intellectual elite.11 One of Kauffman’s self-portraits from this period is in the Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands Park, Surrey (Fig. 4).12 Kauffman produced three large paintings for Berwick, including a full-length portrait of him, which is signed and dated 1793 (Fig. 5). He is depicted in van Dyck dress, or ‘Span- ish costume’, to use Kauffman’s own term.13 This was a popular choice among Kauffman’s male sitters because it endowed them with a festive and historical air while placing the paintings in the great English portrait tradition initiated by van Dyck.14 Her 1777 portrait of John Simpson of Bradley Hall, Northumberland, is directly comparable to her portrait of Berwick, both in the pose and dress of the sitters (Fig. 6).15 Kauffman’s next piece was a painting of Berwick’s younger sister Henrietta, Lady Bruce, a ‘life size full halflength’ portrait of her ‘attired as a Muse’ (Fig. 7).16 Berwick’s widowed mother, Anne (or Anna), and his three sisters had travelled separately to Italy from their brother and his tutor. The portrait of Henrietta was commissioned by Berwick’s mother and paid for by Charles BrudenellBruce, Lord Bruce, who married Henrietta in the spring of 1793 following his dramatic rescue of her as she fell from a bucking horse. Brudenell-Bruce’s tutor Thomas Brand arranged for the payment, noting that he ‘never saw a portrait of hers with so much truth and character’.17 Lord Bruce was equally impressed, and in November 1793 wrote to his father, Thomas, first Earl of Ailesbury: ‘I am more than ever delighted with Angelica’s picture of dear Lady Bruce which I go frequently to see. Lord Berwick has had his done which is very like and in a Vandyck dress.’18 Two years later, in 1795, Lord Bruce himself sat to Kauffman with the purpose of creating a pendant to the portrait of his wife (Fig. 8).19 Like Berwick, Bruce – whose right hand rests on a map of Sicily, which he had visited in 1791 – chose to be portrayed in van Dyck costume.20 An undated and hitherto unpublished letter from Kauffman to Henrietta to arrange her husband’s sitting illustrates some of the practicalities involved in portrait painting: ‘Since Lord Bruce had not time to call this morn I suppose his Lordship means to favour me some other morn with half an hours sitting.’21 Artists were often kept busy arranging visits from clients: in the 1760s, Reynolds saw four or five sitters a day.22
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ANGELICA KAUFFMAN AT ATTINGHAM PARK  35 As well as portraits of Berwick and his sister, Kauffman was commissioned to provide two large history paintings for Attingham. On Berwick’s behalf, Edward Clarke initially suggested an episode from Thomas Chatterton’s poem ‘Goddwyn’, in which Freedom, personified by a female warrior, is confronted by the violent threats of Power, with whom she enters into battle.23 This dramatic subject clearly did not find favour either with the client or the artist. Kauffman was sensitive to the tastes of polite society and the scene may not have been suitable for Berwick’s Drawing Room.24 Instead, he commissioned Euphrosyne (Fig. 1) and Bacchus and Ariadne (Fig. 2), as Kauffman recorded: Euphrosyne Rome. 1793. For Lord Berwick, a picture; height 10 spans, width 7 spans 6 with life size figures representing Venus sitting on a couch playing with Cupid who is smiling at having wounded Euphrosyne’s hand with one of his arrows. Euphrosyne is grieving about it and showing Venus her hand. 300 Zecchini; By order of the above Lord Berwick, Mr Thomas Jenkins paid the said sum on 16th November. 1793.25 x x x Bacchus and Ariadne Rome. June [1794]. For Lord Berwick. A picture height 10 spans width 7 spans 6, with life size figures representing Ariadne deserted by Theseus; she is on a richly adorned couch by a rock on the sea shore and is weeping. Bacchus has been led to her by Cupid who by lifting an edge of a rich material which forms a sort of pavilion, shows to Bacchus the disconsolate Ariadne; 300 Zecchini received through Mr Thomas Jenkins by order of the above named Lord the payment of the picture with 645 crowns.26 In the first work, Euphrosyne, one of the Three Graces, is shown complaining to Venus about the wound caused by Cupid’s dart. The inspiration for the painting, for which Kauffman completed a smaller scale bozzetto for Lord Berwick’s approval,27 came from the poem Le Grazie Vendicate by Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782).28 An engraving of the painting by the Portuguese artist José Teixeira Barreto appears in Scherzi poetici e pittorici (1795) by the author and artist Giovanni Gherardo de Rossi, director of the Portuguese Academy in Rome and Kauffman’s biographer, whose poem was inspired by Kauffman’s painting of Euphrosyne.29 The subject of the second painting, Bacchus and Ariadne, is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.30 The work depicts the moment Bacchus looks upon Ariadne in admiration of her beauty. Ariadne, however, is overwhelmed with grief for the loss of Theseus, her lover, who had abandoned her on the island of Naxos. The themes of love lost and love found are well suited to the Drawing Room at Attingham, given that its plaster ceiling is adorned with Cupid’s arrows (Fig. 3). Kauffman’s earliest large-scale history paintings date from her first visit to Rome in 1763. Her Bacchus and Ariadne of 1764 (Fig. 9) and her Ariadne of 1774 (Fig. 10) both precede her work for Berwick. They demonstrate the skills she had already acquired by her twenties and thirties. By 5 her fifties, when she was working on Berwick’s commissions, they had developed further.31 Kauffman was one of very few women to practise the art of history painting. One central requirement was, of course, an excellent understanding of the human anatomy. However, female artists were not permitted to study nude models, whether male or female – a fact highlighted in Zoffany’s The Academicians of the Royal Academy, which depicts a life class, Kauffman and Mary Moser being represented by portraits hanging on the wall rather than in person.32 Lord Berwick returned from his Grand Tour in 1794 and two years later, Euphrosyne was exhibited at Kauffman’s penultimate exhibition at the Royal Academy.33 The French invasion of Italy and difficulties in getting paintings back to England limited her ability to display works in London, however.34 A letter, dated 12 August 1795, from Kauffman to her bankers and agents in London, Henry Peter Kuhff and Frederick Grellett, records the shipment of one of Berwick’s large paintings: 6 Some weeks ago two other cases where [sic] sent to the care of Msr Otto Frank at Leghorn to be forwarded to England by the first convoy — one of the cases is directed to Lord Berwick the which being likewise directed to your care […] The picture it contains is payd [sic] but I wish the same FIG 5 Thomas Noel Hill, 2nd Lord Berwick, 1793, Angelica Kauffman, oil on canvas, 219.7 x 143.5cm, Attingham Park, Shropshire Photo: © National Trust Images FIG 6 John Simpson, c. 1777, Angelica Kauffman, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 61cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

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34  ANGELICA KAUFFMAN AT ATTINGHAM PARK

3

FIG 3 The Drawing Room at Attingham Park, Shropshire with three paintings by Angelica Kauffman above and on either side of the chimneypiece Photo: © National Trust Images/Andreas von Einsiedel FIG 4 Self-portrait, 1787, Angelica Kauffman, oil on canvas, 111.8 x 87cm, Cobbe Collection, Hatchlands Park, Surrey Photo: courtesy the Cobbe Collection

4

is employing Angelica Kauffman in painting and I am now selecting passages from the poets for her to paint for his house at Attingham.10

yet, the present Lord though fond of it, having hitherto been principally abroad – the sum it cost I am told was certainly not less than £50,000.4

Some of the Adam-style ceilings already incorporated ceiling roundels after designs by Kauffman.5 Her work also influenced the friezes of the Drawing Room and Boudoir chimneypieces by John Devall the Younger (1728–94), made in around 1785.6

Kauffman arrived in England in 1766 and was immediately successful as an exhibitor of history paintings and portraits. The dissemination of her designs via engravings and so-called ‘mechanical paintings’ extended her reputation and her work had become highly fashionable by the 1780s.7

In June 1792, the second Lord Berwick, after graduating from Cambridge, embarked on a Grand Tour to

Italy.8 His tutor (or ‘bear leader’) was his university friend Edward Daniel Clarke, who later became Cambridge’s first professor of mineralogy.9 Clarke had a dual function: to guide Berwick on his tour and to advise him on the purchase of works of art and antiquities for the incomplete house. Soon after their arrival in Rome in November 1792, Clarke wrote:

My time has been taken up in visiting the artists, for we have been here three weeks comparing their works, and in taking the opinions of the oldest and best judges – except where it was mere party matter, and then I ventured to act from my own opinion […] Lord Berwick

In spite of the French Revolutionary Wars, tourists continued to make their way to Italy and commission paintings. Kauffman had returned to Italy in 1781, following 15 successful years in London. She quickly became part of Rome’s artistic and cultural community and her studio, located near the Spanish Steps, was a meeting place for the social and intellectual elite.11 One of Kauffman’s self-portraits from this period is in the Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands Park, Surrey (Fig. 4).12

Kauffman produced three large paintings for Berwick, including a full-length portrait of him, which is signed and dated 1793 (Fig. 5). He is depicted in van Dyck dress, or ‘Span-

ish costume’, to use Kauffman’s own term.13 This was a popular choice among Kauffman’s male sitters because it endowed them with a festive and historical air while placing the paintings in the great English portrait tradition initiated by van Dyck.14 Her 1777 portrait of John Simpson of Bradley Hall, Northumberland, is directly comparable to her portrait of Berwick, both in the pose and dress of the sitters (Fig. 6).15

Kauffman’s next piece was a painting of Berwick’s younger sister Henrietta, Lady Bruce, a ‘life size full halflength’ portrait of her ‘attired as a Muse’ (Fig. 7).16 Berwick’s widowed mother, Anne (or Anna), and his three sisters had travelled separately to Italy from their brother and his tutor. The portrait of Henrietta was commissioned by Berwick’s mother and paid for by Charles BrudenellBruce, Lord Bruce, who married Henrietta in the spring of 1793 following his dramatic rescue of her as she fell from a bucking horse. Brudenell-Bruce’s tutor Thomas Brand arranged for the payment, noting that he ‘never saw a portrait of hers with so much truth and character’.17 Lord Bruce was equally impressed, and in November 1793 wrote to his father, Thomas, first Earl of Ailesbury: ‘I am more than ever delighted with Angelica’s picture of dear Lady Bruce which I go frequently to see. Lord Berwick has had his done which is very like and in a Vandyck dress.’18

Two years later, in 1795, Lord Bruce himself sat to Kauffman with the purpose of creating a pendant to the portrait of his wife (Fig. 8).19 Like Berwick, Bruce – whose right hand rests on a map of Sicily, which he had visited in 1791 – chose to be portrayed in van Dyck costume.20 An undated and hitherto unpublished letter from Kauffman to Henrietta to arrange her husband’s sitting illustrates some of the practicalities involved in portrait painting: ‘Since Lord Bruce had not time to call this morn I suppose his Lordship means to favour me some other morn with half an hours sitting.’21 Artists were often kept busy arranging visits from clients: in the 1760s, Reynolds saw four or five sitters a day.22

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