A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Cosway, Mary
COSWAY, MARY,
One of the best miniature-painters of Italy, was the daughter of an Englishman of the name of Hadfield, who kept an hotel at Leghorn. Mary was born in the year 1779, and married, when twenty years old, an Englishman of the name of Cosway, who had acquired some celebrity as a painter. He soon discovered the talent of his wife, and aided her in cultivating it. He then went with her to Paris, where she devoted herself altogether to miniature-painting and engraving. Her fame soon extended throughout the country, and people from all parts of the kingdom came to have their likenesses taken by her. Her greatest undertaking, a work which was to contain a copy of the best paintings in the Museum, accompanied with historical notices, remained unfinished on account of the loss of a child, which affected her so much that she became melancholy, and gave up her artistical pursuits. She died, 1804, in a nunnery near Lyons.