Lot Essay
Emily Mary Osborn was a London-based painter who exhibited at the Royal Academy (1851-84), as well as at the British Institution, Suffolk Street, the Grosvenor Gallery and elsewhere. The present sketch is for one of her best-known works, shown at the RA in 1857 (no. 299) and now in an English private collection; see Sunshine and Shadow: The David Scott Collection of Victorian Paintings, exh. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1991, cat, no. 13, repr. in colour. The picture was shown again at the International Exhibition held in London in 1862, when it was engraved for the Illustrated London News (12 July, p. 48), and it is discussed and reproduced in James Dafforne's article on Osborn published in the Art Journal in 1864 (pp. 261-3).
As Lindsay Errington wrote in the catalogue of the Edinburgh exhibition, 'it was at one time assumed that [the picture] depicted the plight of a "fallen" woman whose artist lover had died, leaving her to survive on the sale of his pictures. However, it is more likely that, as a woman artist herself, Osborn was explaining the problems met by an orphaned woman artist...attempting to sell her own picture to an art dealer.' The Art Journal adopted this interpretation in its article of 1864.
As Dr. Errington also points out, the situation had been vividly described as early as 1810 in Mary Brunton's novel Self Control. This had been reprinted several times, an edition appearing in 1855, only two years before Osborn exhibited her picture. The problems faced by women artists at this time led to the formation of a Society of Female Artists to help them show and sell their work. It held its first exhibition in Oxford Street in 1857, the very year that Nameless and Friendless appeared at the Royal Academy.
Osborn evidently prepared her picture with great care. In addition to the present sketch, there is a finished drawing in black and red chalk, squared for transfer, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
As Lindsay Errington wrote in the catalogue of the Edinburgh exhibition, 'it was at one time assumed that [the picture] depicted the plight of a "fallen" woman whose artist lover had died, leaving her to survive on the sale of his pictures. However, it is more likely that, as a woman artist herself, Osborn was explaining the problems met by an orphaned woman artist...attempting to sell her own picture to an art dealer.' The Art Journal adopted this interpretation in its article of 1864.
As Dr. Errington also points out, the situation had been vividly described as early as 1810 in Mary Brunton's novel Self Control. This had been reprinted several times, an edition appearing in 1855, only two years before Osborn exhibited her picture. The problems faced by women artists at this time led to the formation of a Society of Female Artists to help them show and sell their work. It held its first exhibition in Oxford Street in 1857, the very year that Nameless and Friendless appeared at the Royal Academy.
Osborn evidently prepared her picture with great care. In addition to the present sketch, there is a finished drawing in black and red chalk, squared for transfer, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.