Anniversary exhibition celebrates museum founder

Josephine Bowes was a French actress turned aristocrat

An exhibition celebrating the 200th birthday of a "visionary" woman will open at a County Durham Museum.

Josephine Bowes, daughter of a humble clockmaker, defied social norms to become a pioneering artist, collector and patron of the arts.

Along with her husband she set up the Bowes Museum, near Barnard Castle, now famous for its collection of art and furniture.

Opening in February, "Trailblazers and Trendsetters" features artworks spanning 300 years, shaping trends in western culture today.

Born in 1825, Josephine Benoite Coffin-Chevalie was a Parisian actress and dancer, who became the mistress and then - unusually for the time - the wife of John Bowes, the illegitimate son of the 10th Earl of Strathmore.

Their home was in France, but they regularly visited his family estates in County Durham, where the couple decided to leave their legacy, the Bowes Museum.

He provided the money, and Josephine, who was a keen artist in her own right, provided the artistic know-how and connections to amass the collection.

Vicky Sturrs, director of programmes and collections at the Bowes Museum, said: "She was an innovator and tastemaker, a collector of young and emerging talent, who amassed a founding collection of 15,000 objects encompassing fine art to ceramics, glassware to textiles, furniture to mechanical objects.

"At the time, more early Impressionist works were purchased by The Bowes Museum than by the National Gallery in London."

"Fruit, flowers and vegetables" is Josephine Bowes most accomplished large-scale paintings

The exhibition examines the "contemporary continuation of Joséphine's collection and imagines where its female founder's knowledge of artistic trends might take [it] next".

Highlights from the existing collections are paired with loans from other museums and new works by leading artists in the North of England.

Ms Sturrs said it aims to "reflect on its founders' vision ... and what it means to be a collecting institution at the forefront of artistic trends for the North of England and beyond."

"Trailblazers and Trendsetters" opens in February.