Emma Gaggiotti Richards
1825–1912 · Papal States, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland · Academic art, Realism, Neoclassicism
The story
At Christmas 1853, Queen Victoria gave Prince Albert a portrait of a dark-haired young woman with a steady gaze — a self-portrait she had commissioned from the painter herself. The painter was Emma Gaggiotti Richards, and the gift tells you how quickly she had risen in London.
She was born in Rome in 1825, daughter of the city's minister of war, and learned to paint in Italy before marrying an English journalist and moving to London around 1849. Within a year she was working for the royal couple. Prince Albert commissioned a set of allegorical figures, Faith, Hope, and Charity among them, as gifts for the Queen.
She painted portraits and allegory in a polished academic manner and exhibited at the Royal Academy, then went home to Italy, spending her long later life in Florence and dying near Rome in 1912. The self-portrait is still in the Royal Collection, the one Victoria wrapped up for Albert.
