A generous donation of important works by Angelika Kauffmann prompted the Art Museum Graubünden to dedicate the artist an extended collection presentation.

Angelika Kauffmann (1741-1807) was the most important European artist of her time, and is today highly esteemed as a prominent painter between classicism and romanticism. She was born in Chur, worked mainly in Italy and England and died in Rome. She is represented in the most important collections of large museums. At the Art Museum Graubünden her works have been the illustrious basis of the collection for some time: The proud self-portrait [Selbstbildnis], in which Angelica Kauffmann presents herself as a self-assured artist, belongs to her best-known paintings. The three singers [Drei Sängerinnen] likewise testify to her long affinity for music as well as her ability to render contents with sophisticated pictorial means. Furthermore, the painting Telemachus’ Sorrow [Der trauernde Telemach] makes clear that Angelika Kauffmann takes much of her material from literature and also shows how she expresses fine psychological moments.

Thanks to a donation, this important collection-focus at the Art Museum Graubünden can now be further developed: The generous donor, Dr. Johannes Fulda of Maienfeld and Kilchberg, has over a number of decades brought together an outstanding group of works, which he has now transferred to the Art Museum Graubünden, and in this way has made it accessible to the public. Part of this donation is a second version of Telemachus’ Sorrow [Der trauernde Telemach] (a third version is at the Metropolitan Museum in New York), but also paintings of particularly high quality such as the grieving Penelope or her personifications of beauty. These figures mourning for love belong to the most acclaimed motifs by Angelika Kauffmann. In allegorical representations she has found her own iconography, one which characterises the image of an entire era.