page_title: The Hours (engraving)
section_title: The Credits
hierarchical_section_title: The Hours (engraving) / The Credits
caption_attribution_description: Detail of original engraving "The Hours" by Francesco Bartolozzi showing Maria Cosway pinxit
context_page_description: The Hours is a stipple engraving by a master of the technique, Francesco Bartolozzi, published on April 4, 1788, from the print shop of Thomas Macklin, at No. 39 Fleet Street, London. The print is based upon a painting by Maria Cosway. The dancing hours, or nymphs of Greek mythology, were a pictorial representation of the poem "Ode on the Spring" by British poet Thomas Gray. The poem begins:
  "Lo! where the rosy-bosomed Hours,
  Fair Venus' train, appear,
  Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
  And wake the purple year!
  The Attic warbler pours her throat,
  Responsive to the cuckoo's note,
  The untaught harmony of spring:
  While, whisp'ring pleasure as they fly,
  Cool Zephyrs thro' the clear blue sky
  Their gathered fragrance fling."
  Maria Cosway sent a copy of the engraving to Jacques-Louis David, a highly influential French painter, who stated, "on ne peut pas faire une poesie plus ingenieuse et plus naturelle."
caption: On the lefthand side under the engraving: "Maria Cosway pinxt." Pinxt was an abbreviation of the Latin, pinxit, which meant "she painted"
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