The "Italian scheme" : Ann Forbes, artist in training

Abstract

The early career of Scottish portrait painter Ann Forbes (1745-1834), who trained in Rome between 1767 and 1771, provides unique insights into the particular challenges experienced by young women who aspired to become professional artists on their return to Britain. Family and friends devised what they called "the Italian scheme" to fund her painting studies in the city where many eighteenth-century British and European art students trained. Excluded by her gender from studying at the Accademia, Forbes relied on the goodwill of resident Scottish artists for her tuition and on willing art collectors to lend paintings for her copy work. Within months of her arrival in Rome, one observer described her as "a wonder" who already excelled art students who had been studying for several years. Letters to and from family and friends at home, especially those from Margaret Forbes, who accompanied and supported her daughter in Rome, and later in London, offer a compelling and often moving narrative of Ann's struggles, successes and failures.