Jean Osborne (née Meikle; 21 February 1926 – 9 July 1965) was an artist from Northern Ireland who worked primarily in oils and watercolours.
[4] The following year Osborne contributed two paintings to the London Group's annual exhibition in the New Burlington Galleries,[1] where she exhibited alongside her old mentor John Minton, Victor Pasmore and Claude Rogers, all founders of the Euston Road School, Bloomsbury Group veterans Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, the sculptors Lynn Chadwick and a young Elizabeth Frink, Patrick Heron and fellow Ulster painter William Scott.
[7] On 20 November 1953 Osborne sailed from Cobh, County Cork on the TSS Olympia to Canada where she was reunited with her husband who had emigrated 6 months earlier.
In January 1955 Osborne showed works in a joint exhibition with her husband and David Partridge at the Art Gallery, St Catharine’s Public Library.
[9] To mark the first anniversary of her arrival in Canada, Osborne presented two paintings in the Art Gallery of Hamilton's 6th Annual Winter Exhibition, an oil entitled The Harmonica Player and a portrait of her closest friend, the poet and playwright Barbara Hunter.
When Dennis was appointed as Head of Art at Lisnagarvey High School in 1962 the couple purchased a house in Lisburn, next door to the artist and teacher Colin Middleton.
[4] Osborne was represented as an 'invited artist' in the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts 86th Annual Exhibition in the autumn of 1965 where she showed two paintings posthumously, including a self-portrait entitled Growth depicting her tumour.
[14] In 1967 the Arts Council of Northern Ireland paid tribute to her life and works in a retrospective memorial exhibition at the New Gallery, Belfast.
The Ulster Society of Women Artists also paid tribute to her life with her inclusion in the annual show in November 1967 at Dublin's Municipal Gallery.