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Joséphine Benoîte Coffin-Chevallier
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'''Joséphine Benoîte Coffin-Chevallier''' was a 19th century actress, patron of the arts, and collector.<ref></ref> She was married to fellow collector [[John Bowes (art collector)|John Bowes]]. She is one of the founders of the [[Bowes Museum]].<ref>Liquid error: wrong number of arguments (2 for 1)</ref>
== Early Life ==
Little is known of her early life, although the Bowes Museum records that her father was a clockmaker.<ref name=":1">Liquid error: wrong number of arguments (1 for 2)</ref> She became an actress in Paris under the stage name Mlle Delorme.
She was a vaudeville performer - an actress, comedienne, and singer - in the ''[[Théâtre des Variétés]]'' during the period when John Bowes purchased and managed the theatre.<ref>Liquid error: wrong number of arguments (1 for 2)</ref>
She found they had a mutual love of the arts, and it is believed that they began a relationship soon after they met in 1847. After their marriage in 1852 she retired from the stage to concentrate on her painting and art collecting career, and she is known to have commissioned plays from playwrights.<ref>Illingworth, J. (2017). The French Library of John and Joséphine Bowes. Published in: French Studies Library Group Annual Review. Illingworth, J. (2017). URL: https://ift.tt/2OpdSSn>
== Artist and Patron of the Arts ==
Coffin-Chevallier was a talented amateur artist who studied under the well-known landscape painter [[Karl Joseph Kuwasseg|Karl Josef Kuwasseg]]. Her work was exhibited at both the [[Salon (Paris)|Paris Salon]] on four occasions in the late 1860s, and once at the [[Royal Academy]], which was an unusual achievement for a woman of the time.<ref name=":0">Liquid error: wrong number of arguments (1 for 2)</ref>
The [[Bowes Museum]] still holds fifty-five of her paintings in its collection, most of which are landscapes.
After her marriage to John Bowes she became a noted social hostess, as well as a patron of the arts on a grand scale. 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'.<ref name=":0" /> She was celebrated for her taste in fashion and jewellery, and an 1872 bill from one of her visits to the foremost couturier of the day, [[Charles Worth]], comes to the equivalent of £114,000 in modern currency.<ref name=":2">Liquid error: wrong number of arguments (1 for 2)</ref> She is known to have sold some of the most valuable of her diamonds in order to fund the completion of the Bowes Museum.<ref name=":2" />
In 1868 Bowes purchased the title of Countess of Montalbo for his wife from the nation of San Marino, to elevate her status.<ref>Liquid error: wrong number of arguments (1 for 2)</ref>
== Founding the Bowes Museum ==
In the 1860s Coffin-Chevallier conceived the idea of founding a museum filled with the already substantial collections of her husband. She sold her wedding gift from Bowes, the [[Chateau du Barry]] at [[Louveciennes|Louvciennes]], in order to raise funds for the project, and is widely credited by the museum as the driving force behind the project. The pair began the collection specifically destined for a museum in Bowes' ancestral lands in Teesdale in 1862. The couple commissioned the architect [[Jules Pellechet]], who had already worked with them in France, to design a museum in Barnard Castle, which was the town nearest to John's family home, [[Streatlam Castle]].<ref></ref>
In the next twelve years 15,000 objects were purchased to fill the projected building, and as with other female collectors of the time Coffin-Chevallier collected pieces across a broad spectrum.<ref>Liquid error: wrong number of arguments (1 for 2)</ref> From the records that are left, Bowes collection archivists surmise that Coffin-Chevallier used her own artistic eye in collecting decorative arts pieces such as ceramics, silverware, and tapestries.<ref>Liquid error: wrong number of arguments (1 for 2)</ref> She also made extensive purchases from the International Exhibitions held in Paris in [[1862 International Exhibition|1862]], [[Exposition Universelle (1867)|1867]], and in London in [[Annual International Exhibitions (London 1871–74)|1871]].<ref name=":1" /> Her purchases of paintings benefited from her friendships with young artists, and she also worked with two Parisian dealers, Mme Lepautre and A. Lamer, who left annotated records of their dealings, which are still held by the museum.<ref name=":1" /> She purchased works by artists as diverse as [[El Greco]], [[Canaletto|Cannaletto]], [[François Boucher|Boucher]], [[Anne Vallayer-Coster]], [[Gustave Courbet|Courbet]], and [[Charles Joshua Chaplin]].
At the ceremony to mark the laying of the foundation stone in 1869, Coffin-Chevallier reportedly said to her husband: 'I lay the bottom stone, and you, Mr Bowes, will lay the top stone'. The museum building, in the style of a French chateau, was not to be completed until 1892.<ref></ref>
Coffin-Chevallier would not live to see it completed. She had experienced bouts of ill health since the 1850s, and died of lung disease at the age of forty-eight in Paris on 9 February 1874. Even in the last days of her life she is known to have spent time ensuring new items of the museum collection were sent to Teesdale.<ref></ref>
== References ==
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[[Category:1825 births]]
[[Category:1874 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century women artists]]
[[Category:19th-century artists]]
[[Category:19th-century philanthropists]]
[[Category:19th-century art collectors]]
[[Category:French art collectors]]
September 16, 2018 at 10:30PM
