Emily Bowes


Emily Bowes Gosse was a Victorian painter and illustrator, and writer of evangelical Christian poems and tracts.

Biography

Emily Bowes was born in London, England to William and Hannah Bowes, both from old New England families. Her early years were divided between Merioneth, Exmouth and London, and in 1824 she commenced work as a governess to Revd John Hawkins in Berkshire, later moving to the home of Revd Sir Christopher John Musgrave, in Hove.
After these spells, Emily returned to London to stay with her parents in Clapton, North London. She attended the Plymouth Brethren assembly in Hackney, where she met her future husband, Philip Henry Gosse. They had known one another for several years before they married at Brook Street Chapel, Tottenham, in 1848. Emily was 42, her husband several years younger. Emily gave birth to their only child, Edmund in 1849.
Emily died in Islington after a painful and protracted battle with breast cancer, and was buried in Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington. Her last words were reputed to be to her husband: "I shall walk with Him in white. Won't you take our lamb and walk with me?"

Painting

Gosse was a landscape painter, having studied with John Sell Cotman. Her work includes the uncredited chromolithographs for her husband's book The Aquarium: an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.

Publications

Gosse was a writer of Christian poetry and a prolific author and distributor of religious tracts, as for example in Narrative Tracts, co-written with her husband. Her most noted publication is Abraham And His Children, a set of object lessons using Biblical characters to illustrate parenting principles.