Emma Susan Ramsden

This striking portrait was painted in 1884 when the sitter, Emma Susan Ramsden, was 45 years of age and the mother of seven children. She is elegantly dressed in ivory silk richly trimmed with lace and accessorised with creamy pearls.

Emma Susan was a Yorkshire lass, born in 1839 to the Rev Edward Duncombe and his wife Susan (née Mainwaring). She lost her older brother when she was just three and then her mother when she was 14. At the age of 19, Emma married Ellis Gosling, the son of a wealthy banker, and moved to live at Busbridge Hall in Surrey. But bereavement was to strike again with the premature death of Ellis in 1861 leaving Emma pregnant with their second child. Two years later she married John Charles Ramsden, an old friend and neighbour from Yorkshire. Ramsden, a Captain in the Royal Artillery, moved into Busbridge Hall. The couple had four sons and a daughter and ran a large household with numerous indoor and outdoor staff.

The portrait is signed on the obverse ‘C.J. Turrell 1884’ and is set in a gold-plated hinged frame, the reverse extensively engraved inside with the sitter’s details. The hanging ring features an ouroboros – a snake eating its own tail – symbolising the cycle of life.

Charles James Turrell (1845-1932) was a prominent London society artist who included royalty amongst his clientele. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1873 and actually exhibited ‘Mrs Ramsden’ there in 1885. Turrell also worked in the USA and indeed died whilst staying in New York.

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