Julia Emily Gordon

Julia Emily Gordon (1810 – 8 February 1896) was a British painter and engraver.

1833 portrait of Julia Emily Gordon by David Wilkie

Life

She was the daughter of Willoughby Gordon and his wife Isabella Julia Lavina Bennet; her father sketched and her mother worked in watercolour and other media. The works of mother and daughter have sometimes been confused.^[1] Her brother Henry Percy Gordon was an engraver, and they produced joint work.^[2] The watercolourist Edward Swinburne, brother of Sir John Swinburne, 6th Baronet, was a relation by marriage.^[1]

Her parents lived at Beckenham and Northcourt Manor, Isle of Wight. J. M. W. Turner stayed with them in 1827, at Northcourt.^[1]

Gordon died on 8 February 1896 in London.^[3]

Works

Julia Emily Gordon, Père-Lachaise

Gordon's work is included in the collections of the British Museum^[4] and the Tate Museum, London.^[5] Her personal papers are held in the Isle of Wight Record Office and the Kent History and Library Centre.^[6] Gordon was the engraver for Milton's Penseroso, a work by John Milton held in the metropolitan Museum of Art.^[7] Pennsylvania State University Libraries hold her "Sketches on the Rhine, and Rime del Petrarca",^[8] and an unpublished translation by her of Johann Karl August Musäus' "The Books of the Chronicles of the Three Sisters" for "J. H. A."^[9] In 1879 she published 44 etchings as a book titled Songs and Etchings in Shade and Sunshine, using the initials "J. E. G."^[10]