Biographers seem often to choose between two weaknesses. They are fond
of asserting that the hero of their narration comes in truth of a gentle
stock, however the clouds of misfortune may for a time have veiled from
general observation the glories of his family tree,--or, failing this,
they take a sort of pride in dwelling upon and exaggerating the
humbleness of his descent and condition. He is a somebody, or he is a
nobody; a gentleman of distinguished origin or an utterly unknown
creature with the vaguest views about his lineage: a waif of the
wayside, a stray of the streets, his rise from obscurity to eminence
being entirely attributable to his own intrinsic merits and exertions.
To this last-mentioned method of biographical treatment has been
subjected Richard Cosway, painter and Royal Academician of the last
century: a man of fame in his day, though that fame may not have come
down to us in a very good state of preservation. The fact that in his
prime he was a man of fashion, a 'personage' in society, the companion
of princes, and an artist of eminence, has given a sort of impetus to
the fancy of tracing him back to a vastly inferior state of life.
Writers dealing with the painter's story, and prepared to point to him
presently as the occupant and ornament of a 'gilded saloon,' have found
a preliminary pleasure in dilating upon his earlier and humbler position
as an errand-boy in a drawing academy. The contrast was effective,
picturesque--dramatic. Contemplate this scene of gloom and degradation;
now turn to this other canvas, all sunshine and prosperity. Is not the
comparison impressive? But then it ought to be true.
This black and white view of the vicissitudes of Cosway's career is due,
in the first instance, to Mr. J.T. Smith, engraver, antiquarian, and
author of the _Life of Nollekens_ and other books. Mr. Shipley, from
Northampton, brother of the Bishop of St. Asaph, and founder of the
Society of Arts, had established a drawing school at No. 229 in the
Strand. Cosway, when quite a lad, says Smith, obtained the notice of
Shipley, and was engaged by him to attend in the studio and carry to and
fro the tea and coffee with which the housekeeper of the establishment
was permitted to provide the students at a cost of threepence per head.
Nollekens and the father of Smith were among the students, and
good-naturedly, the story goes on to say, gave the boy Richard Cosway
instruction in drawing, and encouraged him to compete for the prizes he
afterwards obtained from the Society of Arts. These particulars probably
Smith obtained from his father or from Nollekens--if indeed they be not
wholly due not so much to his own invention as to the confusion of names
and misconception of incidents to which every one is liable who puts too
great a strain upon his memory. Allan Cunningham, it may be observed,
relates facts concerning Cosway's origin and youth which go far towards
controverting the errand-boy episode in his life, as chronicled by
Smith.
Richard Cosway was born in 1740, at Tiverton, in Devonshire, a county
singularly productive of famous artists, having given birth among others
to Haydon, Northcote, and Reynolds. The father of Cosway was the master
of the grammar-school at Tiverton: his uncle was for some time mayor;
and the family, originally Flemish, and engaged in woollen manufactures,
was possessed of considerable property in the town and neighbourhood. To
the connexion of the Cosways with Flanders was ascribed their ownership
of certain valuable works by Rubens, which first lit up a love of
painting in the heart of young Cosway, and made him an idle schoolboy
and an indefatigable artist. The master of Tiverton school was naturally
indignant at the want of scholarly application of his son and pupil; was
for birching him into better behaviour, forbidding him to ply his pencil
at all under heavy penalties. The boy's uncle, the mayor, and a
judicious friend and neighbour, one Mr. Oliver Peard, seem to have
better appreciated the situation. They interposed on behalf of the young
artist, and succeeded in obtaining for him permission to make drawings
during such times as he could be spared from the grammar-school. But at
last it appears to be agreed on all hands that the boy must close his
books: he is wilful, and must have his way--become an artist: there is
no hope whatever of his succeeding in any other line of life. He is to
be humoured to the top of his bent. His passion is to be cured by
indulging it. If he succeeds--well and good,--there is nothing more to
be said. If he fails, his failure will sober him, his friends argue:
render him docile and tractable, obedient to parental commands for the
future.
He was sent up to London, at thirteen, to study under Hudson, Reynolds's
preceptor (and more remarkable on that account than on any other, though
his merits as a portrait-painter are less contemptible than many
suppose); all expenses were to be defrayed by the Mayor of Tiverton and
kindly Mr. Oliver Peard. After a year under Hudson, young Cosway entered
Shipley's Academy, already mentioned. Probably he was a somewhat puny,
insignificant-looking lad, and was therefore made the butt and fag of
the robuster students, compelled to attend upon them and obey their
behests, even to performing menial offices, just as younger boys do in
other academies--for might is right in the world of school--and thus Mr.
Smith's errand-boy story may have originated. But it can be scarcely
said to be substantiated by the further facts he proceeds to narrate:
how that young Cosway in the course of a few years obtained no less than
five premiums, some of five and one of ten guineas, from the Society of
Arts: the first awarded when he was only fourteen years old, the last
when he was under four-and twenty. The unskilled errand-boy could
scarcely have received a prize instantly on his commencing to study.
Quitting Shipley's, he became for a time a teacher at Parr's Drawing
School, but was soon busily employed on his own account in supplying the
jewellers' shops with miniature paintings on ivory; pretty heads and
fancy subjects or mythological scenes to be framed with gold or set with
diamonds; the beau of the day was incomplete without a costly snuff-box
adorned with a lid, the prettiness of which, perhaps, somewhat surpassed
its pudicity. Cosway seems to have been just the artist to supply a
demand of this sort. He was industrious, fond of money,--but rather
because it ministered to habits, which were inclined to be extravagant,
than for any very sordid reasons--and was without high views as to his
art. He did not mind debasing it a little, accommodating his friends the
shopkeepers, and filling his own pockets. And his execution was very
rapid and adroit; he could put just as much work into his subjects as
would give them in uneducated eyes the effect of high finish, while in
truth they occupied but little of his time, and provided him with most
ample profits. But, if slight, they were certainly elegant; if not very
pure in art, they were unquestionably pleasing to a large and important
class. The demand for specimens of Mr. Cosway's ingenious taste became
at last almost in excess of his powers of supply.
First, by his snuff-box subjects, and afterwards by his portraits--on
ivory or in red and black chalk--after the manner Bartolozzi had
introduced--Cosway earned large sums. For many years he was reputed to
have been in possession of a handsomer income than could be secured by
the efforts of all his artist-brethren put together. But it must be said
for him that he worked very hard. At the height of his fame he would
sometimes boast as he sat down to dinner, that he had during the day
despatched some twelve or fourteen sitters. He would often complete
portraits at three sittings of half an hour each. But then his finish
was of the slightest kind, and many of his miniatures can only be
regarded, from a modern point of view, as tinted sketches, after
allowance has been made for the perishable nature of the pigments he
employed. He seems to have possessed a trick of enriching the colours of
the eyes, lips, and cheeks of his sitters, by reducing every other hue
in the picture to a cold blue-grey tone. By this system of violent
contrast any hint of positive colour gained in warmth and brilliance to
a remarkable degree. The miniature painter can hardly help improving and
refining the subjects he deals with; for one reason, because the
delicate nature of the material upon which he works, its exquisite
surface and delicate texture, imparts a marked purity to all his tints.
The coarsest complexion gains in lustre and smoothness when attempt is
made to render it upon ivory; the dainty groundwork gleams through and
gives beauty and clearness to the swarthiest hues. And then, in addition
to this, Cosway had in full the portrait-painter's faculty of flattering
his sitters. He could hardly fail to please them. He understood
thoroughly how, while preserving a real resemblance, to catch the
happiest expression; to subdue unattractive lines; to modify plain
features; to conceal weaknesses; bringing out the really good points of
a face; to light up dull eyes, and flush pale lips and cheeks. The
faults of his portraits consist in their over-conscious graciousness;
they smile and sparkle and are arch and winning to an excess that
sometimes approaches inanity. And he was disposed, perhaps, to record
the fashions of his time with too intense insistence. There was a rage
then, as we know, for a piling up on the head of all sorts of finery:
feathers, lace, ribbons, velvet hats, mob-caps, and strings of pearls.
Cosway will hold back from us none of these adornments, rather he will
force upon us a redundancy of them, and contemplating the aspects of the
grandmothers and great-grandmothers of the present generation as they
appear to us according to Cosway's art, we are led to the conclusion
that the dear old ladies were in truth most killing coquettes, with
quite an extravagant regard for the dictates of their fashion-books, and
occupied by a passion for ogling their fellow-creatures to an extent
that was decidedly reprehensible.
But it must be allowed that Cosway suited his customers, and, moreover,
in the main satisfied the art-demands of his period. However stern
critics might censure, or rival painters scoff, his success was assured.
And in artistic facility and accuracy of drawing, when he cared to be
particular in that respect, he could hardly be said to be behind his
contemporaries. His copies from the antique were both graceful and
correct, owing to his frequent practice in the Duke of Richmond's
gallery, and his outlines received the fervent admiration of Bartolozzi
and Cipriani. He tried his hand now and then at the high historic order
of art of Barry and Fuseli, but his ambition was probably limited to a
less pretentious range,--'the little pleasing paradise of miniature,' as
Allan Cunningham phrases it; he cared rather for the caresses of the
world of fashion than the applause of the cognoscenti. In society he was
a power; for could he not by means of his pencil bestow, as it were, a
certificate of beauty upon whom he would? Have not many of his sitters
acquired, thanks to him, a reputation for good looks which has survived
even to our day, and which, but for his skilful flattery, they never
could have possessed at all? So, in drawing-rooms and boudoirs he was
fêted, and fondly greeted, and made much of, while plenty of money was
slipped into his pocket, and so, according to one of his biographers,
from the gold he gained and the gaiety of the company he kept, he rose
from one of the dirtiest of boys to be one of the smartest of men.
He was, indeed, coxcombical in his smartness. But then he lived in days
when, among a large class, a love of fine clothes had risen to quite a
passion. Patronized by the Prince of Wales, what could he do but imitate
his patron--who was nothing if not 'dressy?' 'The Macaronis' were
furnishing the sensation of the hour. A party of young gentlemen who had
made the grand tour had formed themselves into a club, and from their
always having upon their table a dish of macaroni--a comestible then but
little known in England--they acquired the name of the Macaroni Club; at
least their name has been generally thus accounted for. The Macaroni
Club was to the last century what Crockford's was to this. 'It was
composed,' says Walpole, 'of all the travelled young men who wear long
curls and spying glasses.' In matters of fashion the Macaronis claimed
absolute supremacy. They ruled the world of _ton_--especially
interesting themselves in toilet matters. To wear a style of dress that
had not been sanctioned by the Macaroni Club was to be scouted as an
outer barbarian. For a time everything was '_à la Macaroni_.' It became
the phrase of the hour--springing into existence as suddenly, possessing
the town as wholly, and disappearing at last as completely as such
phrases always do. Of course Cosway must be in the fashion,--must chime
in with the universal humour. He dressed in the height of the Macaroni
vogue. His small plain person was to be seen in all public places
clothed in a mulberry silk coat profusely embroidered with scarlet
strawberries, with sword and bag and a small three-cornered hat perched
on the top of his powdered toupée. He assumed a mincing, affected air--a
tone of excessive refinement and exquisite sensibility. He pretended to
an absurd superiority over his fellows, and striving to conceal his real
and more honest situation as a hard-working artist, posed himself
incessantly as a creature of fashion. Of course in the end he disgusted
his brother painters, while he did not really conciliate 'the quality.'
The former scorned him, his fine clothes, splendid furniture, and black
servants--the more satirical holding him up to ridicule in the shop
windows, by laughable caricatures, such as 'The Macaroni Miniature
Painter; or, Billy Dimple sitting for his picture:' the latter came to
his feasts, drank his wines, won his money from him at hazard,
stimulated his extravagance to the utmost, while they made mouths at him
behind his back, and condemned in secret and among themselves the folly
of his conduct. It must be said for the artist, however, that he toiled
earnestly and successfully to make his professional earnings keep pace
in some sort with his lavish private habits. Cipriani used to relate,
that after whole nights had been wasted by Cosway in the most frivolous
and worthless of pursuits, he was yet to be found at an early hour in
his studio, sedulously toiling to redeem lost time and money, very
penitent for the past, full of the best intentions for the future: all
of course to be abandoned and forgotten when the evening came, the
chandeliers were lighted, the cards strewed the table, and the world of
society gathered round him in his drawing-room again.
A less honest source of emolument than his own pencil provided, Cosway
found in helping to supply the demand then existing for specimens of the
old masters. The love of the connoisseurs for ancient art, even to its
most suspicious examples, had survived the satire of Hogarth and the
indignation of Barry. The patrons of the day were warmer friends to the
picture-dealers than to the painters. Modern works of any pretence were
at an alarming discount: the productions of the past were at high
premium. Cosway skilfully contrived to reap profits in the double
capacity of dealer and painter. He joined the ranks of those whom Barry,
in a tone of bitter complaint, describes as 'artful men both at home and
abroad [who] have not failed to avail themselves of this passion for
ancient art ... for vending in the name of those great masters the old
copies, imitations, and studies of all the obscure artists that have
been working in Italy, France, and other places, for two hundred years
past.' Cosway went into the market of doubtful old masters, and
purchased largely; about many of his specimens there was probably no
doubt whatever. These he repaired, re-touched, re-varnished, re-framed,
and sold for good prices, as 'masterpieces of ancient art,' to such
noble and gentle patrons as had galleries to fill, or walls to cover,
and money to part with. This method of proceeding was doubtless
profitable rather than honourable. Cosway's apologists--Hazlitt among
them--say for him, that he was 'Fancy's child,' the dupe of his own
deceptions, that he really believed in the genuineness, the pure
originality of the old masters he had with his own hand worked upon,
almost past identification. But self deception which is so decidedly a
source of profit to the deceiver has, to say the least of it, a
suspicious element about it.
Cosway at first occupied a house in Orchard Street, Portman Square; but
as his income improved, he moved to No. 4 Berkeley Street, opposite the
Duke of Devonshire's wall, and at that time, according to Smith, he was
attended by a negro servant remarkable for having published an octavo
volume on the subject of slavery. It was in Berkeley Street that Cosway
was first noticed by the Prince of Wales and his royal brothers, whose
liberal patronage of the painter brought him into fashionable and
general estimation. He was appointed painter in ordinary to the Prince;
and in 1771 he was elected a Royal Academician.
Cosway married Maria Hatfield, the daughter of an Englishman who had
made a fortune by keeping an hotel at Leghorn. There is a tinge of
tragedy about the lady's story. Four elder children had been secretly
murdered by a half insane maid-servant, whose crime remained
undiscovered until she was overheard threatening the life of the child
Maria. Upon interrogation, the murderess confessed her guilt, and was
condemned to imprisonment for life. Other children were subsequently
born to the Hatfields. Charlotte, who lived to become the unhappy wife
of Coombe, the author of Dr. Syntax, and a son, afterwards known as an
artist of some promise. Maria Hatfield was educated in a convent, where
she learnt music and drawing. Subsequently she studied painting at Rome,
and there made the acquaintance of Battoni, Maron, Fuseli, Wright of
Derby, and other artists. Upon her father's death she had resolved to
return to the cloister; but her mother brought her on a visit to London,
and a friendship she then formed with the popular Angelica Kauffman
induced her finally to renounce all idea of a nun's life. Soon she
became the wife of Richard Cosway. The marriage took place at St.
George's, Hanover Square; Charles Townley, of Townley Marble celebrity,
giving away the bride.
She possessed beauty,--she was a fair Anglo-Italian with profuse golden
hair--talent, and money. The year of her marriage she exhibited certain
highly-admired miniatures at the Royal Academy. Her fame spread. The
youth, the loveliness, the genius of Mrs. Cosway became town talk. Her
husband's house was thronged with people of fashion who came to see,
admire the lady artist, and purchase specimens of her art. But Cosway,
probably from pride, though it might be from an acute perception of the
greater advantages to be derived from reserve in such a matter, would
not permit his wife to paint professionally. A favoured few might now
and then become the possessors of some slight sketches by Mrs. Cosway;
occasionally she might honour a lady of rank by painting her portrait;
but Mrs. Cosway's ability, it was to be distinctly understood, was not
placed at the service of the general public. Of course this exclusive
system enhanced the market value of the lady's works considerably, and
while the majority of people were lauding Mr. Cosway as a husband too
fond and indulgent to permit his sweet wife to ruin her health by
harassing work at her easel, a judicious minority were perhaps doing Mr.
Cosway stricter justice in accounting him a very cunning practitioner
indeed, in the way of making the most of Mrs. Cosway's talent.
For this, it must be said, however, that as the times went, it did not
really need such careful nursing; it was strong enough, or very nearly
so, to run alone: it was of a highly respectable order. The lady
possessed poetic feeling, with considerable artistic facility. Her
sketches of scenes from Spenser, Shakespeare, Virgil, and Homer compare
not unfavourably with the designs of many of her contemporaries. And her
portraits were of real merit; one of the fair Duchess of Devonshire,
painted as the Cynthia of Spenser, extorted unbounded admiration from
the critics and connoisseurs of the period.
From Berkeley Street Cosway removed to the south side of Pall Mall,
occupying part of the large mansion originally erected by the Duke of
Schomberg--that 'citizen of the world,' as Macaulay calls him, who was
made a Duke, a Knight of the Garter, and Master of the Ordnance by
William the Third, and falling by his master's side at the battle of the
Boyne, was, according to Lord Macaulay, buried in Westminster Abbey;
but, in truth, it would seem that his remains were deposited in the
Cathedral of St. Patrick, Dublin, Dean Swift and the Chapter erecting
there a monument to his memory, and the Dean writing _more suo_ a
sarcastic epitaph[15] on the heirs who had neglected to do their duty by
their great ancestor. Schomberg House--after the Duke's death divided
into three separate houses, and still existing, though in a somewhat
changed and mutilated form, part of it being now occupied by the War
Office--has sheltered many artists of fame under its roof. Here Jervas
painted--the pupil of Kneller, and the admired of Pope, whose deformity
the painter in his portrait of the poet did his best to mend and
conceal; here lived mad Jack Astley, who made so prosperous a marriage
with the rich Lady Duckenfield; and Nathaniel Hone, the Royal
Academician, retaining on the premises a negress model, famous for her
exquisite symmetry of form; then Cosway--and, greatest of all, Thomas
Gainsborough, dying in an upper room on the 2d of August 1778. In the
spacious saloons of Schomberg House, Cosway thought he should find ample
room and verge enough both for himself and his fashionable friends.
[15] This epitaph may be read in Mr. Samuel Lucas's _Secularia; or,
Surveys on the Mainstream of History_, p. 293.
And room was becoming very necessary; for Mrs. Cosway's receptions were
now the town rage--were crowded to inconvenience. They were marked by
what was then a speciality; though it has since become a common enough
characteristic of such assemblies. 'Lions' were to be met with
there--literary, artistic, and otherwise. The last new poets, painters,
players, were to be seen with their honours in their newest gloss; the
latest discoverers, navigators, and travellers--freshly escaped from
shipwreck or cannibals--the rising stars of the House of
Commons--anybody and everybody of the least note, with the provision,
possibly, that they should be 'elegant and ingenious,'--these thronged
the charming Mrs. Cosway's drawing-rooms. The elect of society, for the
first time on the same floor and under the same roof, met and shook
hands, deriving a curious piquant sort of pleasure from the proceeding,
with--_Bohemia_; the word must be used, though not an agreeable one,
much misused and liable to be misinterpreted, and above all, though in
the Cosway period it was altogether unknown and unheard of. Especially
were to be noted among the guests the Whig adherents of the Prince of
Wales, the politicians of the buff and blue school: little Cosway, busy
in the midst of them, attempting a statesman-like attitude, sympathizing
with revolution, and affecting to discover in the convulsions of the
French nation the dawn of an empire of reason and taste, in which genius
and virtue alone would be honoured. Possibly the painter expressed too
unreservedly his views in these respects. A prince may be permitted to
masquerade as a _prolétaire_; but for a bystander to talk red
republicanism to a royal heir-apparent is rather doubtful taste, to say
the least of it. By-and-by wild Prince Hal came to power, and shrunk
from his old associates. The Regent abandoned his buff and blue friends,
looked coldly upon his whilom political companions: withdrawing his
favour from Cosway among the rest. The painter troubled himself little
about the matter. He was too proud or too indifferent to make any effort
to regain the royal patronage. If he had done little to merit its
bestowal upon him in the first instance, certainly he had done nothing
to deserve its withdrawal from him at last.
A frequent guest at Mrs. Cosway's during the last ten years of his life
was Horace Walpole, very pleased at receiving 'little Italian notes of
invitation' from the winning lady. He relates to the Countess of Ossory,
in 1786, his meeting 'la Chevalière d'Eon,' after many years' interval,
at Mrs. Cosway's. He found 'la Chevalière' noisy and vulgar; 'in truth,'
he writes, 'I believe she had dined a little _en dragon_. The night was
hot, she had no muff or gloves, and her hands and arms seem not to have
participated of the change of sexes, but are fitter to carry a chair
than a fan.' At another time he admits: 'Curiosity carried me to a
concert at Mrs. Cosway's--not to hear Rubinelli, who sang one song at
the extravagant price of ten guineas, and whom, for as many shillings, I
have heard sing half-a-dozen at the Opera House; no, but I was curious
to see an English Earl [Cowper] who had passed thirty years at Florence,
and who is more proud of a pinchbeck principality and a paltry order
from Wirtemberg than he was of being a peer of Great Britain when Great
Britain was something.' Elsewhere he speaks admiringly of Mrs. Cosway,
and describes her reception as a Diet at which representatives of all
the princes of Europe assemble.
From Pall Mall Cosway moved to a larger mansion at the south-west corner
of Stratford Place, Oxford Street. A carved stone lion stood on guard at
the entrance--a fact which incited some wag to affix to the door the
following lines, generally attributed to Peter Pindar:--
'When a man to a fair for a show brings a lion,
'Tis usual a monkey the sign-post to tie on.
But here the old custom reversed is seen,
For the lion's without, and the monkey's within.'
According to Smith, a certain ape-like look in Cosway's face in a
measure justified the satire. Irritated by the attack, the painter moved
once more--to No. 20 in the same street.
Dr. Wolcot (Peter Pindar), who had been busy throwing mud and stones at
the Royal Academicians, did not of course spare either Cosway or his
wife. In the lines beginning--
'Fie, Cosway! I'm ashamed to say,
Thou own'st the title of R.A.'
he recommends the painter to find some more honest calling, and bids
Mrs. Cosway mend shirts and stockings, and mind her kitchen, rather than
expose her daubs to the public. Then, as though repenting of his
rudeness, he proceeds:--
'Muse, in this criticism I fear
Thou really hast been too severe:
Cosway paints miniatures with decent spirit,
And Mrs. Cosway boasts some trifling merit.'
The furniture and fittings of Cosway's house in Stratford Place seem to
have been of a most extravagant kind. He surrounded himself with suits
of armour, Genoa velvet, mother-of-pearl, ebony and ivory, carving and
gilding. His rooms were crowded with mosaic cabinets set with jasper,
bloodstone, and lapis-lazuli, ormolu escritoires, buhl chiffoniers,
Japanese screens, massive musical clocks, damask ottomans, with Persian
carpets and Pompadour rugs on the floor, and costly tapestries on the
walls; enamelled caskets set with onyxes, rubies, opals, and emeralds
loaded the tables; the chimney-pieces, sculptured by Banks, were decked
with bronzes, cut-glass, models in wax and terra-cotta, Nankin, Dresden,
and Worcester china: altogether the place must have been quite a
broker's paradise. Yet the painter was immensely proud of it; never
seemed to weary of adding new curiosities to his overcrowded collection.
The failing health of his wife compelled him at last to tear himself
away from his splendid and beloved upholstery. He carried the ailing
lady to Flanders and to Paris. During the tour his conduct was of the
most lordly kind. He possessed, and highly prized, certain cartoons
attributed to Julio Romano, having refused a liberal offer for them from
Russia, because, as he explained, 'he would not sell works of elegance
to barbarians.' Impressed with the size and emptiness of the Louvre
Gallery, however, he now offered his cartoons to the French King as a
gift. They were accepted, and four splendid specimens of Gobelin
tapestry were bestowed upon the painter in token of royal recognition
and gratitude. These tapestries Cosway, objecting to retain them,
possibly lest they should seem to represent a price paid for his
cartoons, forthwith presented to the Prince of Wales. It was the humour
of the grand little man to oblige royalty, the while he was moved by a
keen regard for his own dignity. While at Paris he painted, by desire of
the Duchess of Devonshire, portraits of the Duchess of Orleans and
family, and the Duchess of Polignac; yet, when applied to for portraits
of the King or Queen, he declined the commission, stating that he had
come abroad for the sake of his wife's health and his own amusement, and
not with professional objects in view.
For a season Mrs. Cosway seemed benefited by the change, and returned
home; but a second attack of illness compelled her again to leave
England, this time accompanied by her brother--a young artist whose
skill in design had gained him the gold medal of the Royal Academy.
Walpole writes to the Miss Berrys at Florence: 'I am glad Mrs. Cosway is
with you.... but surely it is odd to drop her child and husband and
country all in a breath!' The lady was absent three years, constantly
expecting her husband to rejoin her; but he was prevented by various
causes from quitting England. During her stay abroad her daughter died,
an only child. It was some relief to the grieving mother to resume her
art-labours, and she painted several large pictures for foreign
churches. At Lyons she was persuaded by Cardinal Fesch to attempt the
founding of a college for young ladies, but the war hindered her
efforts, although she succeeded subsequently in carrying out a similar
design at Lodi.
To their one child the parents were tenderly attached, although Walpole,
while he admits Mrs. Cosway's affliction to be genuine, goes on to say
rather cruelly,--'the man Cosway does not seem to think that much of the
loss belonged to him.' According to Smith, however, he was dotingly fond
of his little girl; was for ever painting her picture; and in one
portrait of her asleep, he introduced the figure of a guardian angel
rocking the cradle. The body of the child was embalmed and preserved in
a marble sarcophagus which stood in the drawing-room in Stratford Place.
It was not until the return of Mrs. Cosway to England that the interment
took place in Bunhill Row Burial Ground.
Of Cosway and his wife, it is stated by the biographer of Mrs. Inchbald,
who numbered them among her most intimate friends, that they were both
'mystics,' and 'could say almost as much of the unintelligible world as
of this.' Hazlitt describes the painter as a Swedenborgian, a believer
in animal magnetism--professing to possess the faculty of second sight,
crediting whatever is incredible. Had he lived in these our days, he
would probably have been a spiritualist, an electro-biologist, a
table-turner. He was wont to proclaim his ability to converse with the
dead or the distant, 'to talk with his lady at Mantua,' says Hazlitt,
'through some fine vehicle of sense, as we speak to a servant
down-stairs through a conduit pipe.' Smith tells us that he had often
heard Cosway relate quite seriously, and with an air of conviction that
was unimpeachable, conversations he professed to have held with King
Charles the First! Sometimes he would startle sober people by asserting
that he had just come from interviews with Apelles and Praxiteles. Four
years after Pitt's death, Cosway, at the dinner of the Royal Academy,
professed to have been that morning visited by the deceased minister,
who declared himself prodigiously hurt, that during his sojourn upon
earth he had not given greater encouragement to the artist's talents.
Another Academician, however, rather outdid this story. 'How can you
talk such trash, Cosway?' he asked. 'You know all you have uttered to be
lies; I can prove it. For this very morning, after Pitt had been with
you he called upon me and said, "I know Cosway will mention my visit to
him at your dinner to-day, but don't believe a word he says, for he'll
tell you nothing but lies."' This unlooked-for counter-statement took
Cosway by surprise, and left him without a reply.
Walpole once said of him, happily, that 'he romanced with his usual
veracity.' Hazlitt thought a 'mystic' character was common to artists,
instancing Loutherbourg, Sharp, Varley, Blake, and others, 'who seemed
to relieve the literalness of their professional studies by voluntary
excursions into the regions of the preternatural, to pass their time
between sleeping and waking, and whose ideas were like a stormy night
with the clouds driven rapidly across, and the blue sky and stars
gleaming between.'
For Cosway's wonderful collection of articles of art, antiquarianism,
and _vertû_, Hazlitt has only good-natured banter. Of what a strange
jumble of apocryphal treasures the painter believed himself the
possessor! And he was without the doubts and anxieties of ordinary
collectors. They strive to believe and to cast aside all suspicion. But
Cosway believed without the slightest effort; he was troubled by no hint
of suspicion. His relics and curiosities were in his eyes absolutely and
unquestionably genuine. His was the crucifix that Abelard prayed to; a
lock of Eloisa's hair; the dagger with which Felton stabbed the Duke of
Buckingham; the first finished sketch of the Jocunda; Titian's colossal
outline of Peter Aretine; a mummy of an Egyptian king; a feather of a
Phoenix; a piece of Noah's Ark, etc. 'Were the articles authentic?' asks
Hazlitt; and he answers his own question--'What matter? Cosway's faith
in them was true!'
Credit is due to the painter for his indomitable good spirits and
buoyancy of heart. His later years were passed in much pain. He had been
twice stricken with paralysis, and the use of his right hand had gone
from him. Though removed from want, his old extravagant habits had
considerably impaired his fortune. He had long left Stratford Place for
a humbler, cheaper house in the Edgeware Road. And he had somewhat
outlived his reputation. He had to endure severe criticism upon his
artistic merits: much calling in question of his position as a painter.
Still he was always bright and gay and kindly. He would hold up the
crippled, wasted hand that had painted lords and ladies--the kings and
queens of society--for some sixty years, and smile with unabated good
humour at the vanity of human wishes. So Hazlitt relates: going on to
say of him--'His soul appeared to possess the life of a bird; and such
was the jauntiness of his air and manner, that to see him sit to have
his half boots laced on, you would fancy (by the help of a figure) that
instead of a little withered old gentleman, it was Venus attired by the
Graces.' His nature was generous and frank. He gave liberally and
cheerfully to almost everybody who applied to him for money. The number
of letters he received requesting pecuniary assistance was stated to be
almost incredible. Of borrowers who never repaid what they borrowed of
him, and of patrons in default, of whom he was too proud to make
repeated claims for what was strictly his due, a long catalogue might
have been made.
He died suddenly at last of a third attack of paralysis, on the 4th day
of July 1821. The seizure occurred as he was taking a carriage drive to
Edgeware, and he expired without a groan in a few minutes. He had long
been in doubt as to whether he should prefer to be buried in his native
Devonshire or with his favourite Rubens at Antwerp. But struck with the
orderly plan of a funeral in the vaults of a London Church, he had said,
'I prefer this to Antwerp or St. Paul's: bury me here.' He was interred
accordingly at Marylebone New Church (the work of young Smirke, son of
his brother academician), a select number of his professional and
personal friends, and a long line of the carriages of his aristocratic
patrons, following the funeral.
Mrs. Cosway erected, on the north wall, under the gallery of the church,
a monument by Westmacott, to her husband's memory. The following
indifferent epitaph by the painter's brother-in-law, 'Syntax' Coombe,
was inscribed upon the marble:--
'Art weeps, Taste mourns, and Genius drops the tear
O'er him so long they loved who slumbers here.
While colours last, and Time allows to give
The all-resembling grace, his name shall live.'
After the death of her husband Mrs. Cosway quitted England, and took up
her abode at her Ladies' College at Lodi, where she was much loved and
respected. How long she survived seems uncertain. Some accounts relate
that she died the same year as Cosway. But Allan Cunningham, writing in
1833, described her as still living.