Beckman: Lord of Sins

Author’s Note

A significant question for me as this story wandered into my imagination was whether there are child prodigies among the painters. Mozart is the quintessential musical wundkerkind, but I hadn’t come across his like elsewhere in the arts. I asked the art historians in my family (we have two) if they knew of such, and the example that came immediately to mind was Pablo Picasso. A little nosing around also brought to light the example of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who was contributing to his family’s upkeep significantly with his sketching by the time he was ten years old. Sir Thomas went on to lead the Royal Academy, and his portraits continue to delight us to this day.

A yet more interesting case was that of Angelica Kauffmann, a Swiss-Austrian lady who became one of two female founding members of the Royal Academy. By the time she was thirteen, Angelica was painting portraits professionally, and she went on to trade portraits with Sir Joshua Reynolds. Alas for the ladies, when the two female founding members of the Academy died, it took more than a century for that august body to again admit a female artist as a Royal Academician.