Mrs. Hugh Morgan and Her Daughter

Angelica Kauffmann · c. 1771

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

63.2 × 76.3 cm (24 7/8 × 30 in.); Framed: 76.9 × 89.8 × 10.2 cm (30 1/4 × 35 3/8 × 4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Rococo

This tender double portrait from around 1771 captures a mother and daughter in the quietly luminous style that made Angelica Kauffmann one of the most sought-after portraitists of the eighteenth century. Kauffmann was among the two female founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts in London — a distinction that speaks to the exceptional regard her contemporaries held for her work at a time when women were rarely admitted to such institutions. Her portraits are characterised by soft, warm tonalities, graceful positioning, and a Neoclassical refinement that flatters without feeling artificial. In this painting, the compositional intimacy between mother and child carries genuine emotional weight, the figures arranged with the gentle formality typical of her London years. Kauffmann was personally acquainted with Goethe, Reynolds, and many of the leading cultural figures of her era, and her circle reflects how widely respected she was beyond the studio. Her work now hangs in major collections across Europe and North America, including the Art Institute of Chicago, which holds this portrait. A skilled hand-painted oil reproduction preserves everything that makes this canvas endure — the warmth of Kauffmann's palette, the softness of her brushwork, and the quiet dignity she brought to every subject she painted.