Joséphine Bowes
Joséphine Bowes (18251874), was a French actress, artist and art collector who founded the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, Teesdale. Biography. Born Joséphine Benoite Coffin-Chevalie, Bowes was the daughter of a Parisian clockmaker and an actress. In 1847 she was an actress with the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris, working under the stage name Mlle. Delorme. She met the wealthy landowner John Bowes and, as was common at the time, became his mistress. However after five years he married her and bought her Chateau du Barry near Paris which remained their home. Bowes became an artist, a  skill she worked on after giving up the theatre on her marriage. Her work was presented at the exhibitions of both the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Royal Academy in London. She was also gifted in recognising what works would become the next sensation, buying impressionist works before impressionism had made a great name. She was also considered one of the great salon holders and patrons of the arts in Paris at the time. The couple did not have children and as an illegitimate son, her husband, John Bowes, did not inherit his father's titles. They  visited his family estates in Durham in the United Kingdom regularly and decided to create an art museum both to cater to the local people's need for art and to create a legacy. Having had the idea Bowes 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. Bowes laid the foundation stone of the Museum on 27 November 1869. However, having been dogged by ill health for years, she died aged only 48 in 1874. It took 25  years from the foundation stone for the museum to open.