Richard Cosway, Maria Cosway and Ottobah Cugoano
1784RCIN 653010
Richard Cosway shows himself seated with his wife Maria and their servant, the anti-slavery campaigner Ottobah Cugoano, supposedly in their garden at Schomberg House in Pall Mall. The composition is an homage to two celebrated marital self-portraits by Rubens. Cugoano is not just a decorative foil: he interacts with his employers elegantly rather than subserviently, handing Maria a bunch of grapes as if he were an angel in a Rest on the Flight into Egypt.
Cat. 43