His parents married at St George's, Hanover Square on 2 July 1820, with Lord Barnard, heir to the Earl of Darlington, as witness. 16 hours later, his father died. Bowes's legitimacy was questioned by the 10th Earl's next surviving brother Thomas Bowes, who claimed the earldom and estates for himself. The Scottish courts agreed that the 1820 marriage had taken place, and that it had been between two unmarried persons. However, since his parents were not domiciled in Scotland, he was not legitimated in Scotland. The result was to make John Bowes officially illegitimate under English and Scottish law, which status came to matter more and more in the Victorian mores already coming into effect. A five-year battle ensued over the estates, with the English estates going to John and the Scottish estates going to his uncle, the 11th Earl. Bowes was raised at Gibside by his mother, now Dowager Countess of Strathmore. In 1831, she married his tutor William Hutt as his first wife.
Bowes left England for France, allegedly because he was not fully welcome in Victorian society as a person of illegitimate birth. While in Paris, France, John Bowes met the actress Joséphine Benoîte Coffin-Chevallier, daughter of a clockmaker, a woman passionate about painting and collecting. She apparently became his mistress, and they married in 1852. For a time, the couple made their home at the Château du Barry in Louveciennes near Paris. They shared a passion for art and acquired a large collection that would ultimately be housed in the Bowes Museum. In 1868, she became Countess of Montalbo, San Marino. Unfortunately both died before their museum project was completed, Josephine having died in 1874. She had no issue, and was buried at Gibside.
Foundation of the Bowes Museum
Joséphine had lain the foundation stone of the museum on 27 November 1869, but she was apparently too ill to actually lay the foundation stone but merely touched it with a trowel. The story of John Bowes is told in the book John Bowes and the Bowes Museum by Charles E Hardy. The book itself has an interesting history. It was first published by the renowned Newcastle upon Tyne publisher Frank Graham in 1970. The second printing in 1978 was again published by Frank Graham but two subsequent editions, 1982 and 1989, were published by The Friends of Bowes Museum.
In 1877, Bowes remarried one Alphonsine Maria St. Amand, divorced wife of the Comte de Courten. The second marriage did not turn out well, and it appears that John Bowes was attempting to obtain a divorce from his wife from March to May 1884. Indeed, it was subsequently reported to have been legally severed in May 1885. Alphonsine may have been mother of the Italian artist Angelo de Courten. Bowes died childless in October 1885 at Streatlam, and was interred next to his first wife at Gibside. It had been intended that they would be reinterred in a Catholic chapel at the Bowes Museum, but this was never completed.
Will, bequests, and legacy
Bowes's will left his wife Alphonsine an annuity of £3000 for life, as well as £20,000. Substantial sums were left to his curator Amelie Basset, and to his three named godchildren. The remainder of his estate, not entailed, was largely devised to the trustees of his first wife's will for the purposes of setting up the Museum. By the terms of his father's entailment, his English properties reverted to his legitimate cousins upon his death. Streatlam Castle was eventually sold by the family in 1922 on the eve of the wedding of Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon to the Duke of York, allegedly to pay for the costs of the wedding. It passed through many hands, and was demolished by its new owner Philip Ivan Pease in 1959, but the Pease family retains the lands till date. The Gibside estate is now owned by the National Trust. John Bowes is best remembered today as the founder of the Bowes Museum, which has been described as the Wallace Collection of the North.
