Osborn lived for some eight years at the parsonage, though she afterwards recalled that her "early surroundings ... were not such as to develope artistic proclivities, there being but little natural beauty in the country around West Tilbury ...".

The same article speaks of experimentation at this period, how the teenage girl, not always being able to obtain the paints she desired "devised a plan of making an extra supply of colours from flowers, by putting the petals into bottles with a little spirits of wine".

Her father's final entry in the parish registers of St. James', was on 2 November 1842, after which the family removed to London – "to the great delight of his eldest girl, who rightly considered there was now some chance of realising the hopes she entertained of one day becoming an artist".

[7] In 1851, at the age of seventeen, Osborn began showing her work in the annual Royal Academy exhibition, and continued to do so over a span of four decades until 1893.

In 1868, Osborn lost her mother "and for two years did no work of importance", then for six months she and her sister devoted themselves to nursing the sick and wounded in the Franco-Prussian War.

[5] Osborn never married and died aged 97 on 14 April 1925 in the home she had shared for many years with Mary Elizabeth Dunn, 10A Cunningham Place, St John's Wood, London.

[1] In 1855, Osborn was paid 200 guineas for painting a group of life-sized portraits for a Mrs. Sturgis and her children and she also gained acclaim in the same year when her work My Cottage Door was purchased by the Queen.

She started the decade off by having another one of her works, The Governess bought by the Queen and The Escape of Lord Nithisdale from the Tower, 1716 brought her more critical praise.

[1] Osborn exhibited her work at the Palace of Fine Arts and The Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.

However, distinguishing her from other female artists who created literary paintings, Osborn's typically were more complex and featured multiple figures to display her ability.

[10] For a period of time, her works also focused on the contrast between youth and age, like in Tough and Tender (1862) and Sunday Morning, Betzingen, Wurtemburg (1863).

"[12] It depicts a recently bereaved woman attempting to make a living as an artist by offering a picture to a dealer, while two "swells" at the left ogle her.

In Going Places: Women Artists in Central London in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Deborah Cherry says that Nameless and Faceless is "concerned less with jostling crowds ... this is a painting about the ocular and corporeal encounters of the modern city and its sexual geographies of desire.