Joséphine Bowes

Joséphine Bowes, Countess of Montalbo (born Joséphine Benoîte Coffin-Chevallier; 1825 – 9 February 1874) was a French-born actress, artist, collector and patron of the arts. She was married to fellow collector John Bowes, son of John Bowes, 10th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. She and her husband founded the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, Teesdale.

Early life Joséphine Benoîte Coffin-Chevallier was born in 1825, the daughter of a clockmaker and an actress.

Salon socialite After her marriage to John Bowes, she became a noted hostess. She was considered one of the great salon holders and patrons of the arts in Paris at the time. The Revue Critique wrote of her 1860s gatherings of artists, intellectuals, and French society that 'the salons of Madame Bowes are counted among the most brilliant in Paris'. She was also gifted in recognising what art works would become the next sensation, buying impressionist works before impressionism had made a great impact.

Bowes was a talented amateur artist who studied under the landscape painter Karl Josef Kuwasseg. She eventually became a skilled artist, with her work exhibited on four occasions in the late 1860s at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris and once at the Royal Academy in London—an unusual achievement for a woman of the time.

In the next twelve years, fifteen thousand objects were purchased to fill the projected building. Bowes collected pieces across a broad spectrum. From the records that are left, Bowes collection archivists surmise that Bowes used her own artistic eye in collecting decorative arts pieces such as ceramics, silverware, and tapestries. As an illegitimate son, John Bowes had not inherited his father's titles. They visited his family estates in Durham in the United Kingdom regularly, however, and chose that location to create the art museum to both cater to the local people's need for art and to create a legacy. Bowes had dedicated herself to building up a collection worthy of the museum, buying art which even if not to her taste, she felt was necessary to show in such a location.

At the ceremony to mark the laying of the foundation stone, Bowes reportedly said to her husband: ‘I lay the bottom stone, and you, Mr Bowes, will lay the top stone’. Joséphine officially laid the foundation stone of the museum on 27 November 1869, but she was apparently too ill to do so physically, and merely touched it with a trowel. John Bowes died in October 1885 at Streatlam, and was interred next to Joséphine at Gibside.