Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/26

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1(5 K A U K A U

KAUFBEUREN, an ancient town in the government district of Swabia and Neuburg, Bavaria, is situated on the Wertach, about 55 miles south-west of Munich by rail. The chief industry is cotton spinning and weaving, and there is a tolerably active trade in cotton-stuffs and cheese. The population in 1875 was 5553.


Kaufbeuren is said to have been built in 842, and to have become a free imperial city by purchase in 1286 or 1288. In 1803 it passed to Bavaria. It was formerly a resort of pilgrims; and Roman coins have been found in the vicinity.


KAUFFMAN, or Kauffmann, Angelica (1740-1807). Tills once popular artist and Royal Academician was born at Coire in the Grisons, October 30, 1740 or 1741. Her baptismal name was Maria-Anne-Angelica-Catharine. Her father, John Joseph Kauffmann, was a poor man and mediocre painter, but apparently very successful in teaching his precocious daughter. She rapidly acquired several languages, read incessantly, and showed marked talents as a musician. Her greatest progress, however, was in painting; and in her twelfth year she had become a notability, with bishops and nobles for her sitters. In 1754 her father took her to Milan, where she diligently studied the great masters. Later visits to Italy of long duration appear to have succeeded this excursion, and in 1763 she visited Rome, returning to it again in 1764. From Rome she passed to Bologna and Venice, being every where fêted and caressed, as much for her talents as for her personal charms. Writing from Rome in August 1764 to his friend Franke, Winckelmann refers to her exceptional popularity. She was then painting his picture, a half length, of which she also made an etching. She spoke Italian as well as German, he says; and she also expressed herself with facility in French and English, – one result of the last-named accomplishment being that she painted all the English visitors to the Eternal City. "She may be styled beautiful," he adds, "and in singing may vie with our best virtuosi." While at Venice, she was induced by Lady Wentworth, the wife of the English ambassador, to accompany her to London, where she appeared in 1765. One of her first works was a portrait of Garrick, exhibited in the year of her arrival at "Mr Moreing's great room in Maiden Lane." The rank of Lady Wentworth opened society to her, and she was everywhere well received, the royal family especially showing her great favour.

Her firmest friend, however, was Reynolds. In his pocket-book her name as "Miss Angelica" or "Miss Angel" appears frequently, and in 1766 he painted her, a compliment which she returned by the Portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds, ætat. 46, which was exhibited by Lord Morley at the "Old Masters" in 1876. Another instance of her intimacy with Reynolds is to be found in the varia tion of Guercino's "Et in Arcadia ego" produced by her at this date, a subject which Reynolds repeated a few years later in his portrait of Mrs Bouverie and Mrs Crewe. When, in 1768 or thereabouts, she was entrapped into a marriage with an adventurer who passed for a Swedish count, Reynolds befriended her, and it was doubtless owing to his good offices that her name is found among the signi- taries to the famous petition to the king for the establish ment of the Royal Academy. In its first catalogue of 1769 she appears with "R.A." after her name (an honour which she shared with another lady and compatriot, Mary Moser); and she contributed the Interview of Hector and Andromache, and three other classical compositions. From this time until 1782 she was an annual exhibitor, sending sometimes as many as seven pictures, generally classic or allegorical subjects. One of the most notable of her per formances was the Leonardo expiring in the Arms of Francis the First, which belongs to the year 1778. In 1773 she

was appointed by the Academy with others to decorate St Paul s, and it was she who, with Biaggio Rebecca, painted the Academy's old lecture room at Somerset House. It is probable that her popularity declined a little in consequence of her unfortunate marriage; but after her first husband's death (she had been long separated from him) she married Antonio Zucchi, a Venetian artist, then resident in England. This was in 1781. Shortly afterwards she retired to Rome, where she lived for twenty-five years with much of her old prestige. In 1782 she lost her father; and in 1795 the year in which she painted the picture of Lady Hamilton now at South Kensington her husband. She continued at intervals to contribute to the Academy, her last exhibit being in 1797. After this she produced but little, and in November 1807 she died, being honoured by a splendid funeral under the direction of Canova. The entire Academy of St Luke, with numerous ecclesiastics and virtuosi, followed her to her tomb in St Andrea delle Frate, and, as at the burial of Raphael, two of her best pictures were carried in procession.


Popular as they were during her lifetime, the works of Angelica Kauffman have not retained their reputation. She had a certain gift of grace, and considerable skill in composition. But her drawing is weak and faulty; her figures lack variety and expression; and her men are masculine women. Her colouring, however, is fairly enough defined by Waagen's term "cheerful." Rooms decorated by her brush are still to be seen in various quarters. At Hampton Court is a portrait of the duchess of Brunswick; in the National Gallery an allegorical composition of Religion attended by the Virtues. There are other pictures by her at Paris, at Dresden, in the Hermitage at St Petersburg, and in the Pinakothek at Munich. The Munich example is a portrait of herself; there is a second in the Uffizi at Florence, and a third in the National Portrait Gallery, South Kensington. A few of her works in private collections have also been exhibited among the "Old Masters" at Burlington House. But she is perhaps best known by the numerous engravings from her designs by Schiavonetti, Bartolozzi, and others. Those by Bartolozzi especially still find considerable favour with collectors. Her life was written in 1810 by Giovanni de Rossi. It has also been used as the basis of a romance by Leon de Wailly, 1838; and it prompted the charming novelette contributed by Mrs Richmond Ritchie to the Cornhill Magazine in 1875 under the title of "Miss Angel." (A. D.)


KAULBACH, Wilhelm von (1805-74), an acknowledged leader in modern art, was born in Westphalia 15th October 1805. His parentage was humble; and his father, who was poor, combined painting with the goldsmith's trade, but means were found to place Wilhelm, a youth of seventeen, in the art academy of Düsseldorf, then reorganized, and becoming renowned under the directorship of Peter von Cornelius. Young Kaulbach at the outset had to fight a hard battle: his circumstances were necessitous; he contended against hardships, even hunger. But his courage never failed; and, uniting genius with industry, he was ere long found foremost among the young national party which resolved that the arts of Germany should see a great revival.

Munich is the city most closely identified with Kaulbach. The large and ambitious works by which Louis I. sought to transform the capital of Bavaria into a German Athens afforded to the young painter an appropriate sphere. Cornelius had for some years been commissioned to execute the enormous frescoes in the Glyptothek, and his custom was in the winters with the aid of Kaulbach and others to complete the cartoons at Düsseldorf, and then in the summers, accompanied by his best scholars, to carry out the designs in colour on the museum walls in Munich. But in 1824 Cornelius became director of the Bavarian academy. Kaulbach, not yet twenty, followed, took up his permanent residence in Munich, laboured hard on the public works, executed independent commissions, and rose to such distinction that in 1849, when Cornelius left for Berlin, he succeeded to the directorship of the academy, an office which he held for a quarter of a century, up to the day