page_title: Maria Cosway
section_title: Relationship with Thomas Jefferson
hierarchical_section_title: Maria Cosway / Relationship with Thomas Jefferson
context_page_description: Maria Luisa Caterina Cecilia Cosway was an Italian-English artist and educationalist. She worked in England, in France, and later in Italy, cultivating a large circle of friends and clients.
  She exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, and commissioned the first portrait of Napoleon to be seen in England. Her paintings and engravings are held by the British Museum, the British Library, and the New York Public Library. Her work was included in London exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery in 1995–96 and Tate Britain in 2006.
  Cosway was an accomplished composer, musician, and society hostess with her husband, painter Richard Cosway. She had a brief romantic relationship with the widowed American statesman Thomas Jefferson in 1786 while he served in Paris as the envoy to France; the pair kept up a correspondence until his death in 1826.
  Cosway founded a girls' school in Paris, which she directed from 1803 to 1809. Soon after it closed, she founded a Catholic convent and girls' school in Lodi, northern Italy, which she directed until her death.
context_section_description: At the Grain Market (Halles aux Bleds), in Paris, August 1786, John Trumbull introduced the Cosways to Jefferson, then a widower at 43 serving as American Minister to France. Maria was 27. Jefferson then begged off his scheduled dinner companion, saying he needed to tend to official business, and instead spent the evening with Maria at the Palais Royal.
  Cosway and Jefferson shared an interest in art and architecture; together they attended exhibits throughout the city and countryside. He would write of their adventures: "How beautiful was every object! the Pont du Neuilly, the hills along the Seine, the rainbows of the Machine of Marly, the terraces of Saint Germain, the chateaux, the gardens, the statues of Marly, the Pavilion of Louveciennes... In the evening, when one took a retrospect of the day, what a mass of happiness had we travelled over!" Over the course of six weeks, Jefferson developed a romantic attachment to Cosway, spending each day with her.
  At her husband's insistence, the Cosways departed for London. Jefferson's 4,000-word "The Dialogue of the Head vs. the Heart" love letter followed dated 12–13 October 1786.  He describes his head conversing with his heart—a struggle between the practical and the romantic.
  Scholars suggest that Jefferson was particularly partial to a romantic attachment at this point in his life. Martha Jefferson had died four years before; he had just learned of the death of his youngest daughter Lucy; and his other two daughters were away at school. At least one account held that Cosway began to develop stronger feelings for Jefferson, but when she travelled to Paris to meet him again, she found him more distant.
  A devout Catholic who did not want to have children, she worried about pregnancy. Some historians believe nothing further developed besides correspondence. Since Jefferson was very discreet, no one knows for certain the extent of their relationship. Jefferson eventually stopped writing her until some time later when she contacted him; their renewed correspondence continued until his death. Historians such as Andrew Burstein have suggested the relationship was romantic mostly on Jefferson's side, and that Cosway was his opposite, more artistic than rational. Their correspondence survives. Before Jefferson left Paris, he wrote her, "I am going to America and you are going to Italy. One of us is going the wrong way, for the way will ever be wrong that leads us further apart."
  Cosway introduced Jefferson to her friend Angelica Schuyler Church, the sister-in-law of his rival Alexander Hamilton. Church kept up a correspondence with both Jefferson and Cosway in later life; her correspondence with them is held at the University of Virginia's archive.
  Cosway and Jefferson both held images of the other. He kept an engraving by Luigi Schiavonetti from a drawing by Maria's husband. Trumbull was commissioned by Maria to paint a portrait of Jefferson; this was later owned by the Italian government.  The painting was later displayed as part of a Smithsonian exhibition. After it ended, and in celebration of the American Bicentennial, Italy bestowed the painting on the American government.  It now hangs in the  White House.
caption: Thomas Jefferson in 1788 by John Trumbull. An intimate friend, he and Maria corresponded for the rest of their lives after his time in Paris.
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