Maria Cosway - Later Life

Later Life

Cosway eventually moved back to the continent of Europe. She travelled with her brother George Hadfield in Italy, where she lived in the north for three years. She returned to England after the death of her daughter at about age 10. Painting seriously, Cosway completed several religious pictures for chapels.

Despite Napoleon's war with England, she traveled to France. In Paris Cardinal Joseph Fesch persuaded her to establish a college for young ladies, which she managed from 1803 until 1809. The Duke of Lodi invited her to Italy to establish a convent and Catholic school for girls in Lodi (near Milan). She directed the Collegio delle Grazie in northern Italy until her death in 1838.

In 1821 Cosway briefly returned to England to care for her husband before his death. With the aid of her friend Sir John Soane, she auctioned Richard's large art collection, and used the funds to support the convent school.

In a letter to Jefferson (held by the University of Virginia), Cosway mourned the loss of mutual old friends following the death of Angelica Schuyler Church. As a tribute to Church, Cosway designed a temple ceiling depicting the Three Graces surrounding her friend's name. In June 1826, she wrote to the Italian engraver Giovanni Paolo Lasinio Junior, respecting the publication of her husband's drawings in Florence.

Cosway died in 1838 at her school in Lodi.