Annie Swynnerton

Annie Louisa Robinson was born in Hulme, Manchester in 1844.{{efn|Her birth record shows that she was born in the Chorlton registration district (Hulme was in that district).{{cite web |url=http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl |title=Search: Annie Robinson – birth 1844 |publisher=FindMyPast |access-date=1 November 2014 |archive-date=17 June 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160617225849/http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl |url-status=live }} Her place of birth is also given as Kersal{{cite book|author=Sara Gray|title=The Dictionary of British Women Artists|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LfAFBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA255|year=2009|publisher=Casemate Publishers|isbn=978-0-7188-3084-7|pages=255–256|chapter=Annie Louisa Swynnerton}} and Salford.{{cite book|author1=Terry Wyke|author2=Harry Cocks|title=Public Sculpture of Greater Manchester|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mFOhWSH9B6wC&pg=PA461|date=1 January 2004|publisher=Liverpool University Press|isbn=978-0-85323-567-5|page=461}}}} Her parents were Francis Robinson, a solicitor, and Ann Sanderson. Swynnerton had six sisters. She made and sold watercolours to supplement the family's income during a difficult financial period.{{cite book|author=Elizabeth Crawford|title=The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866–1928|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a2EK9P7-ZMsC&pg=PA669|date=2 September 2003|publisher=Routledge|isbn=1-135-43402-6|page=669}} Her sisters Julia and Emily also studied at Manchester School of Art, recorded as being prize-winning students in The Manchester Guardian in 1873 (24 Dec, p8.)

Swynnerton trained at the Manchester School of Art, beginning in 1871. She won a gold prize and a scholarship for an oil and watercolour painting. From 1874 to 1876, she studied in Rome along with her friend and fellow artist, Susan Isabel Dacre. The women then studied at the Académie Julian in Paris from 1877 to 1880. Swynnerton was influenced by the works of Jules Bastien-Lepage. She lived in Manchester in 1880 and by 1882 was living in London.

Annie painted portraits, figures, symbolist works and landscapes. George Frederic Watts and Sir Edward Burne-Jones were supporters of her career. According to Linda Murray, "She was much influenced by Watts, and many of her subjects were of the allegorical or symbolic type which was his forte. Her drawing was solid, and she had a sculptural grasp of form allied to fresh, broken colour displaying affinities with Impressionism. The catalogue for the Tate exhibition "Exposed. The Victorian Nude" states that "Rome based Annie Swynnerton was one of the most daring female painters of the nude, often shocking audiences with her robustly painted figures".{{Cite book|title=Exposed. The Victorian Nude|publisher=Tate Publishing 2001}}

File:Watts-Paolo and Francesca.jpg|George Frederic Watts, Paolo and Francesca

File:Annie Swynnerton Cupid And Psyche 1891.jpg|Annie Louisa Swynnerton, Cupid and Psyche, 1890, Gallery Oldham

File:Swynnerton The sense of Sight.jpg|Annie Louisa Swynnerton, The Sense of Sight, oil on canvas, 1895, National Museums Liverpool

File:Edward Burne-Jones Sidonia von Bork.jpg|Edward Burne-Jones, Sidonia von Borcke, 1860

Swynnerton's works incorporated aspects of Neoclassicism, Pre-Raphaelitism and Impressionism. The Magazine of Art described one of her works, "[A] highly imaginative design by [Swynnerton] is Mater Triumphalis. The limbs of the figure are somewhat heavy in outline, whilst there is a certain metallic appearance in the colouring that is quite apart from the idea of the flowing life-blood in a human body."{{cite book|author=Marion Harry Spiellmann|title=The Magazine of Art|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1MzlAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA295|year=1892|publisher=Cassell, Petter & Galpin|page=295}} She was also adept at painting children.

File:Annie Swynnerton - The Young Mother.jpg|The Young Mother, {{circa|1887}}

File:Annie Louisa Swynnerton Illusions.jpg|Illusions, oil on canvas, 1900, Manchester City Art Gallery

File:Annie-Louise Swynnerton - Hope.jpg|New Risen Hope, 1904

Dacre and Swynnerton shared a studio. In 1879, the two women founded the Manchester Society of Women Painters, which offered art education and exhibitions. Emily Robinson was also a member. Swynnerton painted Dacre's portrait, which was exhibited in 1880 at the Royal Academy of Arts. It was given to Manchester Art Gallery by the sitter in 1932. She was the second woman to sit on the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition hanging committee in 1895.

Swynnerton painted portraits of members of the Garrett family, including Agnes Garrett, Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett, which was purchased by the Chantrey Bequest for the nation and is at the Tate Gallery,{{cite book|author1=Susan P. Casteras|author2=Colleen Denney|title=The Grosvenor Gallery: A Palace of Art in Victorian England|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EbJBSpYc0_4C&pg=PA55|date=1 January 1996|publisher=Yale Center for British Art|isbn=978-0-300-06752-1|page=55}} and Louisa Garrett Anderson.

She painted portraits of people close to the Garretts, including Henry James and Rev. William Gaskell, husband of novelist Elizabeth Gaskell. Dame Ethel Smyth was a patron to Swynnerton. John Singer Sargent made a painting of Swynnerton and Smyth's sister, Mrs. Charles Hunter.

File:Annie Swynnerton - Rev William Gaskell.jpg|Rev William Gaskell, 1879

File:Annie Swynnerton - Susan Isabel Dacre.jpg|Susan Isabel Dacre, 1880

File:Annie Swynnerton, Henry James.jpg|Henry James, by 1922

File:Anne Louise Swynnerton, Dame Millicent Fawcett, CBE, LLD, Tate.jpg|Dame Millicent Fawcett, CBE, LLD, Tate, by 1930

With an initial introduction by Burne-Jones, Swynnerton exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts from 1879 to 1886 and then 1902 to 1934. John Singer Sargent appreciated and purchased her work. He gave the nation The Oreads made by Swynnerton. He was instrumental in her election in 1922 to become the first female associate of the Royal Academy since the 18th century and the first woman to be elected into the organisation.{{cite web | url=http://www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/indexplus?_IXACTION_=file&_IXFILE_=templates/full/person.html&person=5922 | title=Annie Swynnerton, A.R.A | publisher=Royal Academy of Arts | access-date=19 November 2014 | archive-date=29 November 2014 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141129195141/http://www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/indexplus?_IXACTION_=file&_IXFILE_=templates%2Ffull%2Fperson.html&person=5922 | url-status=live }}{{efn|Two founding members of the Royal Academy of the Arts in 1768 were Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffman, but women could not attend life classes or hold office. Women were discouraged from studying at the school following Moser and Kauffman's deaths. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says that Swynnerton was the first woman since the 1800s to become an associate. The Royal Academy of Arts site say she was the first woman to be elected into the organisation (Moser and Kauffman were co-founders). Dame Laura Knight also became an associate member in the 1920s and became the first woman to become a full member in 1936.{{cite book|author=Julia M. Gergits | chapter=Royal Academy of Arts|editor=Helen Tierney|title=Women's Studies Encyclopedia|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4pQgXitLlGwC&pg=PA1236|date=1 January 1999|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-313-31073-7|pages=1236, 1237}}}} Swynnerton's work was also exhibited at other national and international exhibitions, including Aberdeen, Doncaster, Huddersfield, Manchester, and Chicago and Pittsburgh. In 1893, Florence Nightingale at Scutari was shown at Women's Exhibition at the Chicago World's Exposition. According to Hellary Fraser, author of Women Writing Art History in the Nineteenth Century, the work showed the manner with which women artists could convey tender feeling with strong artistic composition and colour.{{cite book|author=Hilary Fraser|title=Women Writing Art History in the Nineteenth Century: Looking Like a Woman|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mQhQBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA172|date=4 September 2014|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-316-06209-8|page=172}} Swynnerton was included in the 2018 exhibit Women in Paris 1850–1900.{{cite book |last1=Madeline |first1=Laurence |title=Women artists in Paris, 1850-1900 |date=2017 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0300223934}}

She was an active supporter of the women's suffrage movement of the time,Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement, London, Routledge, 2001; p. 669. and was a signatory to the 1889 National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies' Declaration in Favour of Women's Suffrage.

She met sculptor Joseph William Swynnerton, from the Isle of Man, possibly while the two were both living in Rome. They married in 1883{{cite book|author=Cathy Hartley|title=Historical Dictionary of British Women|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pFGR2OvCAS4C&pg=PA418|date=15 April 2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-35533-3|page=418|access-date=27 September 2016|archive-date=13 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210213212736/https://books.google.com/books?id=pFGR2OvCAS4C&pg=PA418|url-status=live}}{{efn|Gray says that they were married about 1886.}} and lived primarily in Rome and had a studio in Shepherd's Bush in London. The Swynnertons were married until 1910, when he died.

Swynnerton's eyesight deteriorated in her later years. Following her husband's death, she lived in Chelsea, London and Rome, before finally settling on Hayling Island, England. She died there in 1933.{{Cite ODNB|id=60287|title=Swynnerton [née Robinson], Annie Louisa (1844–1933)}} There was a posthumous sale of the contents of her former studio, removed from 1A The Avenue, 76 Fulham Road, London, SW3 at Christie's in London on 9 February 1934.Christie's, London, 9 February 1934, lots 56–179A. This included her own work (both finished and unfinished), her small collection of pictures by Old Masters (including Guercino and Moroni) together with frames and easels. In her will, and in memory of Susan Isabel Dacre, she left a bequest to Francis Dodd, an artist.

Swynnerton was described as follows:

{{blockquote|She was a talented artist and an accomplished woman, though scarcely one of whom it could be said she possessed a charm of manner. Indeed, by maintaining the courage of her convictions she was at times embarrassingly outspoken. She had a slight stutter.|Gladys Storey, Dickens and Daughter{{cite book|author=Gladys Storey|title=Dickens and Daughter|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=K3-omd78tYcC&pg=PA200|year=1939|publisher=Haskell House Publishers|location=New York|page=200|lccn=79-164657}}}}

• List of English women artists
• Women Painters of the World, published 1905

{{notelist}}

{{reflist}}

• Thomson, Susan. Manchester's Victorian Art Scene And Its Unrecognised Artists , Manchester Art Press, 2007 {{ISBN|978-0-9554619-0-3}}
• Thomson, Susan. The Life and Works of Annie Louisa Swynnerton , Manchester Art Press, 2018 {{ISBN |978-0-9554619-3-4}}

{{commons category|Annie Louise Swynnerton}}

• {{Art UK bio}}
• [http://www.annielouisaswynnerton.com AnnieLouisaSwynnerton.com] A web collection of all the known works of Annie Louisa Swynnerton for which images can be found.
• [http://www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/indexplus?_IXACTION_=file&_IXFILE_=templates/full/person.html&_IXTRAIL_=Academicians&person=5922 Profile on Royal Academy of Arts Collections]
• {{vimeo|256758292|Annie Swynnerton: Painting Light and Hope}}

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{{New Woman (late 19th century)}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swynnerton, Annie}}

Category:1844 births

Category:1933 deaths

Category:19th-century English painters

Category:20th-century English painters

Category:19th-century English women artists

Category:Painters from Manchester

Category:Associates of the Royal Academy

Category:English feminists

Category:English suffragists

Category:People from Chorlton-on-Medlock

Category:Society of Women Artists members

Category:20th-century English women painters

Category:19th-century English women painters