Emily Mary Osborn

Emily Mary Osborn (1828–1925), or Osborne, was an English painter of the Victorian era. She was best known for her pictures of children and her genre paintings, especially on themes of women in distress.

Emily Osborn was born in Essex, the eldest of nine children of the Rev. Edward Osborn and his wife Mary,who took up the curacy of West Tilbury under its rector Edward Linzee during the spring of 1834, when Emily was about 5. The family occupied the parsonage at the top of Gun Hill, which is pictured in a lithograph of 1845 by D. Walton. Osborn lived for some 8 years at the parsonage, though she afterwards recalled that her "early surroundings ... were not such as to develope artistic proclivities, there being but little natural beauty in the country around West Tilbury ...". There, her mother encouraged her "and watched with pride the clever portraits Emily drew of her brothers and sisters". The parent herself possessed a great love of painting and had, on her own account, "wished in vain to study Art professionally". The same article speaks of experimentation at this period, how the teenage girl, not always being able to obtain the paints she desired "devised a plan of making an extra supply of colours from flowers, by putting the petals into bottles with a little spirits of wine".

Her father's final entry in the parish registers of St. James', was on 2 November 1842, after which the family removed to London – "to the great delight of his eldest girl, who rightly considered there was now some chance of realising the hopes she entertained of one day becoming an artist". Thereafter she attended evening classes at the Dickenson academy in Maddox Street, where she was taught by John Mogford. She then studied privately under one of the masters, J.M. Leigh from Maddox Street, and later at his academy in Newman Street for a year. In 1851, at the age of seventeen, Osborn began showing her work in the annual Royal Academy exhibits, and continued to do so over a span of four decades until 1893. Her first paintings to be sent to the Royal Academy were a few portraits and figure subjects "of unpretending character", in the Great Exhibition year, 1851. In 1854 the R.A. exhibited a small picture by Osborn, titled Pickles and Preserves, which was purchased by C. J. Mitchell, Esq., who later introduced the artist to his brother, Mr. William Mitchell. He, "hearing she was desirous of producing something of greater importance", gave Emily a commission for a group of life-sized portraits of a lady (Mrs. Sturgiss) and her three children. With the 200 guineas received for this work, she 'added a studio to her residence'. She had also, in that same R.A. exhibition (1855) hung a smaller painting called My Cottage Door, "which brought the artist well-deserved fame" and was purchased by Queen Victoria.

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