A boy, in Van Dyck dress, black slashed doublet, standing white lawn collar, curling brown hair

The use of Van Dyck dress in the present miniature reflects the general influence of historicism and the masquerade on eighteenth-century society portraiture, as well as the specific interest of Richard Cosway in cultivating his artistic personality through romantic dress. The slashed doublet and lawn shirt of the present miniature relate closely to the Van Dyck dress Cosway preferred to use in his self-portraits. Richard Cosway's resulting reputation as a 'macaroni', one of the young men of extreme fashion in the eighteenth century, was chronicled in the Morning Post (1788): 'Dickey Cosway has published a great many likenesses of his own dear self, but whether to commemorate the beauties of his person, or to give posterity the eternal similitude of so amiable a man, it is difficult to say. The last portrait which this magnanimous artist made of himself is clothed in a Spanish garb [...]' (Exhibition catalogue Richard & Maria Cosway, Regency Artists of Taste and Fashion, Edinburgh, Scottish National Portrait Gallery; 1995, London, National Portrait Gallery, 1995-1996, p. 103).