Art in England: Notes and Studies

by Dutton Cook

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.