Figure group

1769–1782

An annual exhibitor at the Royal Academy

From 1769 until 1782 Kauffman exhibited at the Royal Academy every year, sometimes sending as many as seven pictures, generally on classical or allegorical subjects.

1770s

Engravers reproduce her pictures

At the same time Kauffman began to work with engravers who copied her pictures for wide distribution, and she became a commercially successful artist.

1773

Chosen to decorate St Paul’s Cathedral

In 1773 Kauffman, the only woman among the artists chosen, was appointed to decorate St Paul’s Cathedral in London, but the scheme was never carried out.

1775

The scandal over Nathaniel Hone’s “The Conjurer”

In 1775 the Academician Nathaniel Hone, a critic of Kauffman’s friendship with Reynolds, courted controversy with his satirical picture “The Conjurer”, seen as an attack on the fashion for Italian Renaissance art and a ridicule of Reynolds; the Academy rejected it, and it had originally included a nude caricature of Kauffman in one corner, which Hone painted out after she complained.