A portrait of Maria Cosway, full length, seated in a garden, with a closed book by her side. She wears a wide-brimmed plumed hat, and a low-cut gown. Her hands are folded in her lap. Inscribed below: R. Cosway R.A. Delin.t / F. Bartolozzi Sculp.t / maria cosway / Publishd as the Act directs 29. Jan.t 1785. By G. Bartolozzi & to bi had at M.r Torres Hay Market. 28. The sheet has been trimmed within the platemark.

In Bartolozzi’s sublimely elegant print there are clear references to the art of earlier times: in addition to the Rubensian dress, the combination of black and red inks would have been appreciated as an allusion to the technique of drawing in black, red and white chalks (aux trois crayons) that was popular earlier in the eighteenth century in the circles of Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and other artists of the fêtes champêtres.

The social success of Richard and Maria Cosway, and their many self-portraits that claim the mantle of the old masters, did not fail to arouse the jealousy and resentment of some of their fellow artists. A year after the publication of Bartolozzi’s print Elizabeth Jackson published an anonymous burlesque of the portrait (with Maria’s surname changed to ‘Costive’, meaning 'constipated’), showing the artist with a deranged expression and surrounded by four paintings she had exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts (see RCIN 653017). On the floor is a portrait entitled ‘DICKY CAOS ’, a play on the name of her husband. Two days later Jackson published a similarly crude satire (entitled Dicky Causway) of a portrait of Richard Cosway, in which the artist had shown himself in the pose of Raphael from an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi, with a biography of Rubens by his side.

Text adapted from Portrait of the Artist, London, 2016