Emily Mary Osborn (1828–1925), or Osborne, was an English painter of the Victorian era. She is known for her pictures of children and her genre paintings, especially on themes of women in distress.

Nameless and Friendless (1857, Tate Gallery in London) is as bleak a painting as its title suggests. A young orphaned woman offers one of her paintings to a dealer. She seems resigned, as if she knows already that his answer will be a ‘no’. The other men in the room are either sneering or leering at her, while her mud-splattered skirt and downcast expression suggest a desperate situation. The subtitle of the painting, taken from the Book of Proverbs, emphasises the often powerless situation of single women in the city.(

Osborn was a successful painter, even counting Queen Victoria as a patron. She used this position of power to help improve the lives of the kinds of women typically depicted in her genre paintings. She was a member of the Society of Female Artists, established in 1857 to help women overcome the difficulties in exhibiting and selling their work. Elsewhere, she was a dedicated campaigner for women’s rights. She put her name to the 1859 petition demanding women’s access to the Royal Academy Schools, as well as to the 1889 Declaration in Favour of Woman’s Suffrage.