Richard Cosway RA (5 November 1742 – 4 July 1821) was a leading English portrait painter of the Georgian and Regency era, noted for his miniatures.

He was initially educated at Blundell's School, where his father was master, but at the age of twelve he was allowed to travel to London to take lessons in painting.

[3] He painted the future King George IV in 1780 and was appointed Painter to the Prince of Wales[4] in 1785—the only time this title was ever awarded.

From 1995 to 1996, the National Portrait Gallery in London held an exhibition entitled Richard and Maria Cosway: Regency Artists of Taste and Fashion, with 250 works on display.

[5][7] Richard Cosway was an effeminate Macaroni with "a mincing, affected air" dressed in the height of fashion: "His small plain person was to be seen in all the public places clothed in a mulberry silk coated embroidered with scarlet strawberries, with a sword and bag and small three-cornered hat perched on the top of his powdered toupée.

[4] Cosway's wife Maria survived him many years, and died in Italy in January 1838, in a school for girls which she had founded, and which she had attached to an important religious order devoted to the cause of female education, known as the Dame Inglesi.