An engraving after a drawing of Maria Cosway; full length, seated against a wall. Her head, turned in profile to the left, is thrown back on her shoulder. She wears a low-cut gown, and her hands are clasped in her lap. A dead bird lies on the ground before her. Proof before letters. The sheet has been cut within the platemark.

The painter Maria Cosway (see RCIN 653010, 653011) was a frequent subject for the drawings and prints of her husband, Richard, both in conventional portraits and ‘in character’. The title of this print, and that of RCIN 653014 (inscribed on their finished states) comes from John Milton’s pair of pastoral poems of 1645, evoking the pleasures of the active and contemplative lives. In Il Penseroso (The Thoughtful One) Maria is wearing a simple, ‘country’ dress and mourns over a dead bird on the ground. An earlier state of Il Penseroso was entitled Lesbia, as an illustration of the lines of the Roman poet Catullus on his lover lamenting the death of her pet sparrow. In L’Allegro (The Cheerful One) Maria is reading, seated in a garden with a fountain of Venus; she is wearing a sophisticated ‘city’ gown, with a feather fan in her hand.

Text adapted from Portrait of the Artist, London, 2016