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Maria Louisa Catherine Cecilia Cosway (née Hadfield)

1 of 7 portraits of Maria Louisa Catherine Cecilia Cosway (née Hadfield)

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Maria Louisa Catherine Cecilia Cosway (née Hadfield)

by Richard Cosway
pencil and watercolour, 1781-1785
11 1/4 in. x 9 1/2 in. (286 mm x 242 mm) overall
Purchased, 2017
Primary Collection
NPG 7036

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Richard Cosway (1742-1821), Miniature painter. Artist or producer associated with 101 portraits, Sitter in 16 portraits.

This portraitback to top

This is the first and most direct of the several portraits that Richard Cosway made of his wife. It depicts her as a fashionable beauty and as a female artist with her porte-crayon, an instrument used to hold drawing material, on the base of a pillar. Wearing a turban that frames the sitter as an exotic and adventurous woman, she is shown with her hand to her chin in a well-recognised compositional device that suggests she is also a thinker. The classical interior makes reference to her Anglo-Italian identity and underpins her status as a serious artist with a continental art training and learning.

Linked publicationsback to top

Events of 1781back to top

Current affairs

American painter John Singleton Copley, now resident in London, completes his celebrated painting The Death of the Earl of Chatham, depicting the collapse of William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham on 7 April 1778, during a debate in the House of Lords on the American War of Independence.
William Pitt the Younger, later Prime Minister, enters Parliament.

Art and science

Astronomer William Herschel discovers Uranus, the first planet to be found by means of a telescope, and names it Georgium Sidus (George's Star) in honour of George III.
Artist and theatre designer Philip James De Loutherbourg presents his innovative miniature mechanical theatre, the Eidophusikon, at his house in Soho, London.

International

American War of Independence: British general Charles Cornwallis is forced to surrender at Yorktown. Maryland ratifies the Articles of Confederation - the last state to do so - completing 'the Confederation of the United States'.
Zong Massacre: 133 Africans are thrown overboard the slave ship Zong on the orders of a British slave-trader who then attempts to reclaim their value from insurers. The case becomes a landmark in the fight for abolition.

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