A caricature of Maria Cosway, sitting in a cell with her painter's accoutrement, and with pictures around her. Inscribed below: Maria Costive / at her Studies. / London Pubd April 29 1786 by E. Jackson No 14 Marylebone Stt Golden Sqe.; and in pencil: Maria Cosway / the Artist. The sheet has been trimmed within the platemark.

The social success of Richard and Maria Cosway, and their many self-portraits that claim the mantle of the old masters, did not fail to arouse the jealousy and resentment of some of their fellow artists. A year after the publication of Bartolozzi’s print of Maria (RCIN 653012) Elizabeth Jackson published this anonymous burlesque of the portrait (with Maria’s surname changed to ‘Costive’, meaning ‘constipated’), showing the artist with a deranged expression and surrounded by four paintings she had exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts. On the floor is a portrait entitled ‘DICKY CAOS ’, a play on the name of her husband. Two days later Jackson published a similarly crude satire (entitled Dicky Causway) of a portrait of Richard Cosway, in which the artist had shown himself in the pose of Raphael from an engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi, with a biography of Rubens by his side.

Text adapted from Portrait of the Artist, London, 2016