Major exhibition celebrating 200 years of The Bowes Museum's co-founder opens this weekend

Opening this Saturday, February 8, and with works spanning 300 years, the exhibition features more than 60 artists, designers, and makers shaping trends in western culture today: from Sophie Anderson (1823 - 1903) and Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973), to Grayson Perry (b.1960), Magdalena Odundo (b.1950), Pheobe Cummings (b.1981), and Lucy Waters (b.1999). Like Joséphine’s story, From Joséphine Bowes: Trendsetters and Trailblazers is full of surprises.

Joséphine was a 19th-century warrior woman: humble in roots and bold in spirit. She lived at a time when Modern art and Impressionism were gaining momentum. Still, women did not have the right to vote, and the civil rights movement was yet to begin.

The daughter of a clockmaker, her life as a Parisian actress and dancer transformed in 1852 when she married and followed her heart to the North of England. With access to a considerable fortune through her husband’s inheritance, as an illegitimate heir, a racehorse win, and the sale of a wedding gift, within ten years, Joséphine had defied many societal norms to become a pioneering artist, collector and patron of the arts.

Fiercely independent, like the communities of her adopted home in Teesdale, Joséphine was unusually successful in navigating the dominant rules of gender, geography, class and taste, when she laid the first stone of The Bowes Museum in 1862.

The Bowes Museum now explores the contemporary continuation of Joséphine’s collection and imagines where its female founder’s knowledge of artistic trends might take The Bowes Museum next. From Joséphine Bowes: Trendsetters and Trailblazers, is organised into four thematic sections.

Presenting works in wide-ranging media, from painting, drawing, film and photography to sculpture, ceramics, furniture and textiles, every aspect of The Bowes Museum is shown in a new light. Highlights from Joséphine’s eclectic and expansive eighteenth and nineteenth-century collections are paired with significant loans from twentieth-century European history and new works by leading artists today in the North of England.

In the first section, which is dedicated to our relationship with nature, visitors are greeted by one of Joséphine Bowes’s most accomplished large-scale still-life oil paintings, Fruit, Flowers and Vegetables, c.1860-1874. This is paired with two new, previously unseen works, including a digital piece, Physalis, 2024, by David Lisser (b.1987), and a major commission for the exhibition by Pheobe Cummings (b.1981). From The Bowes Museum’s collection, Fruit and Flowers, 1866, by Henri Fantin Latour (1836 – 1904), also joins the display.

The intimate second section focuses on the female versus male gaze, past and present. It features a provocative selection of works, including the empowering portrait of a woman, Scheherazade, date unknown, by Sophie Anderson, adjacent to the painted plate, Woman’s Face, 1953, by Pablo Picasso and Madoura Pottery, and an earthenware Urn, c.1990, by Grayson Perry. The bold figurative wall-textile, Bodyscape No.4, 2023, by Daisy Collingridge (b.1991) and two moving portrayals of women embracing in, As I Stood, Listened and Watched, I Said this Woman is Not for Burning, 1985, by Sutapa Biswas (b.1962) also feature.

Joy Labinjo’s (b.1994) Chosen Family, 2024, lies at the heart of section three, which has a focus on collecting and belonging. Here, recent sculptures by Leilah Barbirye (b.1985), including Kalibbala from the Kuchu Nsenene (Grasshopper) Clan, 2023-24, for example, stand proudly alongside Traccia (Table with Bird’s Feet) Cassina Edition, 1973, by Meret Oppenheim (1913 – 1985), and a photograph series by Gillian Wearing (b.1963).

The exhibition concludes with open skies and seas, full of possibilities. Among the selected works, the wild waters of Maree Montante, pres Boulogne-sur-mer, 1870, by Joséphine Bowes, is seen side by side with Paul Merrick’s (b.1973) large and enigmatic abstract painting, Lagoon, 2020.

Vicky Sturrs, Director of Programmes and Collections at The Bowes Museum, said: “Joséphine Bowes was a 19th-century 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, London. The driving force behind this new exhibition, From Joséphine Bowes: Trendsetters and Trailblazers, is The Bowes Museum reflecting 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.

"How, 200 years on, should Joséphine’s pioneering vision to create a public museum for everyone, especially the people of Teesdale, live on today and for future generations?”

'From Joséphine Bowes: Trendsetters and Trailblazers' opens this Saturday, February 8 until June 29.