Portrait of a Woman
Framed: 2 7/16 × 2 inches (6.19 × 5.08 cm)
Cosway created large, showy miniatures for aristocratic patrons. He sacrificed truthfulness for glamour, capturing his subjects in gauzy, translucent tones. While his sitters’ faces are carefully painted, loose brushstrokes characterize their garments and hair. Enlarged eyes draw attention to sitters’ faces, and bare ivory emphasizes the paleness of their skin.
One contemporary commentator wrote that Cosway’s miniatures “were not fashionable—they were fashion itself.” His high society clientele often wore his works as bold jewelry.
Cosway employed theatrical tactics to increase his celebrity. After 1785, he signed his miniatures Primarius Pictor Serenissimi Walliae Principis, Latin for Principal Painter to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales (see miniature 6).
Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1958;
Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 61, p. 24, (repro.), as Unknown Lady.
Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Richard Cosway, Portrait of a Woman, 1777,” catalogue entry in Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan, The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, vol. 2, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1320.
