Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807), who was a founder member of the Royal Academy and one of the most soughtafter portrait painters of her generation, is the subject of a major retrospective Exhibition at the Royal Academy, the first of its type in Britain in my lifetime.

The press release from the R.A. describes her as “one of the most celebrated artists of the 18th Century” and indeed she was. She was born in Switzerland and trained under her father before moving to various cities in Italy, ending up in Rome in 1763 where she became friends with Nathaniel Dance, the English portrait and history painter.

He, like many of his male contemporaries, fell under the spell of Angelica and sent her portrait of the actor, David Garrick, painted in Rome, to the Free Society in London, where it caused a stir. Who was this Swiss girl in her very early 20s who could paint such a powerful portrait? Even the thought of this young girl staring into the face of a man 25 years her senior, as Garrick was, must have caused a frisson. When she arrived in London a year later, she was inundated with commissions to paint portraits. These she undertook and specialised in painting the most famous women of the day and “history” pictures, whose subjects were taken from classical history or literature and which depicted female protagonists, for the most part. This altered the direction of European Art.

History painting, despite the promotion of Sir Joshua Reynolds, President of The Royal Academy, who was rumoured to have had an affair with Angelica, whom he referred to as “Miss Angel”, was not very popular in England and Angelica left London for Italy in 1781. In that year she married Antonio Zucchi, a Venetian painter working in England and they lived first in Venice and latterly in Rome, where her salon/studio was to quote the R.A. flyer “a hub for the City’s cultural life”. Goethe and Canova were frequent visitors and Canova organised her funeral. She took Goethe on art appreciation trips every Sunday in Rome and contemporaries described her as “the most cultivated woman in Europe”.

But what of her paintings themselves? I confess that I have always found them rather unlovable. I was steeped in classical mythology and history as a child, so I don’t find her subject matter dry or forbidding. It is her palette and technique I don’t like. She is painting in the age of Neo-Classicism, so one expects a clarity of line, which is wholly missing in her work. It may be that the smudgy outlines are a result of her early training in Italy, where the Sfumato Technique was so popular. This avoids harsh outlines and encourages a smokey, blurred edge to figures and draperies. This blurriness has, to my mind, crept into her choice of colours too, which lack purity and brilliance. Angelica likes dirty golds, muddy oranges, and beige. Compare her self-portrait with that of her younger contemporary Elizabeth Vigee-Le-Brun (1753-1842) and tell me who you think is the greater painter. Finally, with so much of her work based on ideas of Classical beauty, I am not sure she is any good at catching a likeness. Compare her portrait of her friend and admirer, Sir Joshua Reynolds, with one of Reynolds’ own self-portraits. We know exactly what Reynolds looked like, because he painted himself so many times and they do not vary, except in age.

Angelica’s portrait does not look anything like him. It could be anybody.

I am sorry, Angelica, to make these harsh judgements about your work, but I have always felt you were overrated as a painter, not as a human being. I would have loved to have sat next to you at dinner.

Anyway, don’t take my word for how good or bad Angelica Kauffman is as a painter. It is just my opinion.

Over the past few decades, her reputation has soared and she has an international following. Her prices at auction have followed suit. Twenty-two of her paintings have made six figure sums and the top price is $1.1M. Most of these pictures have been group portraits, but not all. In 2001 Sotheby’s sold a self-portrait by Angelica, in a painted oval, for over £420,000. Anyone who has inherited a painting by Angelica Kauffman should be aware of current auction prices to make certain they are properly insured.

“A cold coming, we had of it, just the worst time of year for a journey and such a long journey”, is how T.S. Eliot’s ‘Journey of the Magi’ begins. Semi-desert can be very cold on a clear night, and we know it was clear, because the wise men were following a star.

No-one knows when our saviour was born, but the early, persecuted Christians, probably celebrated Jesus’ birth on December 25th because the Romans were celebrating ‘Sol Invictus’, the birth of the unconquered sun, and Saturnalia when people feasted, exchanged gifts and did not have time to watch what the subversive Christians were up to.

In 336A.D., when Constantine, a Christian convert was Emperor, the church in Rome began to formally celebrate Christmas Day on December 25th.

As a child, I was fascinated by descriptions of the aftermath of his birth – the Adorations by Magi and Shepherds and started a collection of secondhand Christmas cards of these subjects. What particularly fascinated me was the contrast between the elaborately dressed Magi, a Magus is a wise man, with their extravagant and costly gifts adoring the Christ child and the simplicity and piety of the shepherds in their ragged clothes and offering a precious lamb as a gift.

Two of my favourite treatments of this subject are The Adoration of the Shepherds by Gerrit van Honthorst in The National Gallery and the Portinari Altarpiece in the Uffizi. Honthorst (1592-1656), was a Dutchman from Utrecht, who with two friends visited Rome in the early 17th Century and fell under the spell of Caravaggio and adopted his dramatic use of chiaroscuro (light and shade). He was known as Gherardo dalle Notti, Gerard of the Night, in Rome. This picture was painted there in 1610.

The Portinari Altarpiece was commissioned by Tomasso Portinari, a prominent banker, working for the Medici in Bruges, from the brilliant Flemish artist Hugo van der Goes (c.1430/40-1482) around 1472-5. The shepherds have coarse, sunburnt faces, rough hands and grimy fingernails, all of which is accentuated when one looks at the beautiful Virgin Mary, with her pale skin and delicate hands.

Contrast these depictions of simple, pious shepherds, with Benozzo Gozzoli’s (c.1421-1497) ‘Procession of the Magi’ in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence.

The richly caparisoned horses, the smartly attired attendants and the exotically dressed Magi exude a sense of wealth and power. Benozzo and at least one assistant completed this miraculous fresco over a few months in 1459.

These paintings remind me of happy Christmases past, and my scrapbook of Old Master adorations.