X.
ANGELICA KAUFMANN.
The name of Angelica Kaufmann has outlived the celebrity of her works. most of us have heard enough of her to know that she was in her day an artist of note; but few besides those who have read the charming romance of "Miss Angel," which Mrs. Richmond Ritchie (Miss Thackeray) has founded upon her career, know or care to know much more. Some of her pictures, but chiefly those which she considered as of minor importance, are still popular in the form of engravings and photographs; but the originals are little cared for, and hold, in the opinion of critics, by no means so high a place as was once awarded them.
The truth seems to be that, although she was a painstaking and gifted artist, deserving of recognition, the extent and duration of her fame are due rather to her precocity, her sex, and her attractive personality, than to the merit of her work.
Maria Anne Angelica Catharine Kaufmann—she was well provided with names—was born at Coire, in Switzerland, October 30, 1741. She was the daughter of John Joseph Kaufmann, an artist of limited reputation. He was one of those artists who, if his own paintings were mediocre, was an excellent teacher. Very early in life she displayed a marked inclination for music and painting, and her father cultivated these tastes to the uttermost. Her instruction in art and its theories
was, under his care, exceptionally thorough, and she
