The Vow

“I myself have vowed the highest sacrifice: to place my art over all else, even over marriage. My art is my life, my love.”

This vow to pursue art as a woman unencumbered by love or marriage begins The Vow, author Jude Berman’s gloriously rich imagining of the life of 18th-century Swiss painter Angelica Kauffman. Told in the first person, the story draws us beyond the facts known about the artist–such as her work from a young age as her father’s assistant, the peripatetic life that allowed her to meet other artists and experience many of the world’s masterpieces in person, and her role as a founding member of London’s Royal Academy of Art, to name a few–into what Berman speculates might have been the thoughts, emotions, and meaningful interactions of such a remarkable life.

We meet Angelica as a young woman in Venice. Despite the societal obstacles of the time that would serve to constrain women, Kauffman’s father recognizes her prodigious talent and encourages her to exercise it through painting portraits and skilled reproductions of masterworks. While this work keeps them financially solvent, Angelica has bigger dreams of becoming a historical painter, an area usually limited to men. It is in the midst of painting one of her copies, however, that she agrees to paint the portrait of Lady Bridget Wentworth, wife of the British ambassador. Delighted by the finished painting, Bridget takes young Angelica under her wing and introduces her into London society. With singular focus and the influential intervention of her benefactress, Angelica propels herself from toiling in obscurity to a highly sought-after portraitist, and the steady income allows her to begin to indulge her passion for historical works. A fortunate meeting with artist Sir Joshua Reynolds leads to these works finding buyers, thus cementing Angelica’s artistic reputation.

But it is the 18th century, and marriage is what is expected of women. Even the introduction to Reynolds is assumed to be that of potential wife to potential husband rather than of two artists who might share in supporting and encouraging each other. Every road for a single woman, it seems, leads to wedlock. Likewise, the vow to pursue art at all costs begins to war with the attraction Angelica feels for a certain would-be suitor. In her naïveté, she makes a rash decision that upends her artistic life and independence for several years. It is only when she meets the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that Angelica believes she has found a true kindred spirit and begins to imagine an unconventional relationship and a life that will express their romantic ideals.

Fans of historical fiction and sweeping literary stories alike will be thrilled by the detail in this award-winning novel. The period clothing and the rituals of the day come to vivid life in Berman’s hands. Those interested in art history will delight that Angelica’s relationship with Joshua Reynolds grows in the midst of the groundbreaking development of the Society of Artists, an organization that will become the Royal Academy. Ultimately, readers will be entranced by Angelica Kaufmann’s journey from idealistic young woman to much more nuanced seasoned artist. The Vow is an engaging story of a woman navigating a male-dominated world, both making her mark in it and better defining herself through it.