RICHARD COSWAY
Probably there is no one miniature painter whose name is so familiar to the general reader as that of Richard Cosway, there is no one whose works in this particular branch of art are more admired, no one more frequently copied, and, as a consequence, no one whose miniatures or alleged miniatures are to be found in so many British collections as "Maccaroni Cosway," as he was called in his day. Maccaroni, you remember, was a name given to "dandies" about the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
Sticking a huge feather in his hat, disporting himself in a mulberry coat with scarlet strawberries, displaying himself at sale-rooms and other places of public resort—these and such-like doings were delights to this diminutive, vain, and eccentric artist.
"Yankee Doodle went to town
Upon a little pony,
He stuck a feather in his hat
And called it Maccaroni."
In his "Lives of Eminent British Painters" Allan Cunningham closes a long account of Cosway in these words, "His works are less widely known than they deserve, and his fame is faded." In the light of the present day, and the annals of the auction-room, that statement is one which can by no means be admitted. It may, on the contrary, be safely asserted of Richard Cosway that his fame, whatever it may have been in the days of Allan Cunningham, so far from fading, has been steadily increasing, until it has reached a pinnacle of the highest reputation—that is, if the pecuniary test be applied. But whilst this is true, it may also be conceded that of late a more just appreciation of the relative merits of Cosway, as compared with some of his contemporaries, has been made by the impartial and discriminating critic; by which I mean it is not so much that Cosway has become less famous, but that others, such as George Engleheart and John Smart, for example, have received proper recognition, and all the finest works of the period are no longer assigned, as a matter of course, to Cosway, as it may be said was at one time the case.
The eccentricities of Cosway as a man, his diminutive appearance, and extravagance of attire, made him a conspicuous object wherever he went. His extravagance of living, his vanity and ostentation, excited jealousy and ridicule; but, whilst fortune smiled on him, he could boast of his friendship with the Prince of Wales, and lavishly entertained the rank and fashion of his day. He was, according to the gossip of J. T. Smith, in his "Life and Times of Nollekins," "one of the dirtiest of boys." This amusing but sometimes ill-natured writer says that Cosway was employed as a waiter to the students at Shipley's well-known drawing school, and used to take in the tea and coffee for them. Inasmuch as his father was Master of Blundell's School, Tiverton, it seems improbable that the young Cosway would have been placed in such a menial position at Shipley's. That he was a student there we know, as he was also in the studio of Thomas Hudson, a mediocre artist, best known as the master of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and, like the President of the Royal Academy and Cosway himself, also a Devonshire man.
G. ENGLEHEART.