There are two versions of A Dream of Italy, a ‘mountains’ version known from a 1922 newspaper illustration and a Brookly Museum archival image, and a ‘clouds’ version known from a recent auction. The latter appears to be the same work with the background and minor details of the figure reworked.

The reworking of the background must have happened after the work left the Brooklyn Museum collection in 1947. It is assumed here that it is the same canvas, although it could theoretically be a duplicate piece by Annie, although the exactness of the fine detail make this seem unlikely.

The Head of a Bacchante is a figuratively related work and so is also listed here.

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A DREAM OF ITALY (mountain version).

Image: The Sphere (newspaper), 9 Dec 1922.

Images: private archival image.

The Art Journal, 1899:

‘A Dream of Italy,’ by Mrs. Swynnerton, is a very ambitious composition, and if somewhat dry and incisive, attains a measure of success that, with due deference, perhaps no other woman artist could secure.

London Evening Standard, 2 March 1910:

In the Central Gallery Mrs. Swynnerton’s “A Dream of Italy,” [and works by Miss Bessie MacNicol] make everything else look a little commonplace. “A Dream of Italy,” the life-sized, semi-nude figure of a woman stepping down the mountain side, has a combination of dignity and beauty that can only be called classical … full of joy

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The London Daily Mail, 22 April 1899:

Mrs. Swynnerton’s “A Dream of Italy” (213) … The flamboyant figure of a more than sufficiently endowed (physically speaking) Italian peasant girl flaunts herself from out the canvas. Her dimensions are so liberal as to be almost terrifying. The colour, too, is cast in the same generous mould. Clever the painting is, undeniably: but it is too aggressive, too compelling.

The Guardian, 22 April 1899.

No one can help seeing Mrs. A. L. Swynnerton’s lifesize nude subject entitled “A Dream of Italy.” It is a picture one could see with distinctness a hundred yards away. The iron modelling and metallic draperies suggest that sculpture rather than painting would have been the right medium. Anything less like a dream it would be impossible to imagine.

Truth, 27 April 1899:

I am afraid that Mrs. A. L. Swynnerton’s “Dream of Italy” (No. 213) must be considered a nightmare. The massive and large-limbed woman, with very little on, who is squeezing the juice of unripe grapes into her mouth, and posing at large, so to speak, in front of a number of papier-mâché rocks, is not in any way suggestive of the Italy we know now.

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A DREAM OF ITALY (clouds version).

Images: www.invaluable.com.

The two canvases overlain:

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• Media: oil on canvas.
• Dimensions: 1050 x 2170 mm (2.3 m²) [details from iGallery]).
• History:
  • [1881 – According to Gobbi et al (2004) Of Queens’ Gardens, “in 1881 the English painter Annie Robinson (later Swynnerton) exhibited a painting called A Dream of Italy at the independent and avant-garde Grosvenor Gallery in London.” However, this date is thirteen years before any other reference to the painting. Other works of Annie’s show that she had the necessary skill, but without other confirmation the date given in this publication is assumed to be an error or a different (lost) work with the same title is being referred to.]
  • 1894 exhibited Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (Liverpool Mercury, 1 Sep 1894).
  • Jan 1899 – exhibited New Gallery in an exhibition “opened in January” (Hazell’s Annual, 1900).
  • 22 Apr 1899 – exhibited New Gallery Spring Exhibition (St James Gazette, 24 Apr 1899; The Art Journal, 1899; The Spectator, 29 Apr 1899, Illustrated London News, 6 May 1900).
  • Jul 1900 – exhibited Women’s Exhibition, Earl’s Court, London, “1458 … £840 0s 0d” (over £80,000 at 2023 value). (Echo, 9 Jul 1900; The Scotsman, 9 Jul 1900; Bury and Norwich Post, 21 Aug 1900.)
  • Mar 1910 – exhibited at Women’s International Art Club 11th annual exhibition, The Grafton Gallery. (London Evening Standard, 2 Mar 1910; The Queen, 5 Mar 1910.)
  • c. 1920 – “the New York Museum paid “£1,500 for her “Dream of Italy”” (Portsmouth Evening News, 25 Oct 1933).
  • Oct 1920 – On loan to The Brooklyn Museum, from Mr. A. Augustus Healey* (The Brooklyn Museum Quarterly, vol. VII, no. 4.) [* A wealthy American leather merchant and keen patron of the arts, painted by John Singer Sargent in 1907.]
  • 1920 – Acquired by (i.e., entered the permanent collection of) the Brooklyn Museum, listed here as one of the “gifts” to the “Museums of The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences” Department of Fine Arts, presented by A. Augustus Healey.
  • Image in The Sphere (newspaper), 9 Dec 1922.
  • 12 Dec 1922 – Victoria Daily Times states “Her work is … in the New York Museum, the director paying 1,000 guineas for “A Dream of Italy.”
  • Oct 1923 – exhibited “Twenty Third Show of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors” Fine Arts Galleries, 215 West Fifty-seventh street, on loan from the “Brooklyn Art Museum” (Pittsburgh Daily Post, 14 Oct 1923; The Art News, 20 Oct 1923).
  • 1947 – ‘deaccessioned’ by the Brooklyn Museum, i.e, removed from collection and sold to private buyer (source: private communication).
  • 2017/2018 – The ‘clouds’ version, assumed by myself (web site author) to be the ‘mountains’ canvas reworked, auctioned by iGallery, Salem, MA, July 27, 2017 and 24 May 2018, both times unsold.
• Location: unknown.

NOTE: some newspaper articles state the Metropolitan Museum of New York once owned the painting, but this appears to be an error – the Met kindly searched their archives and have no record of the work ever having been housed or exhibited there. (E.g., Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 13 Jul 1923; Belfast Telegraph, 7 Feb 1924.)

[Sincere thanks to E_ M_, The Metropolitan Museum of New York and the Brooklyn Museum for their help in tracing the history of this work.]

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HEAD OF A BACCHANTE.

The head is very similar to that in A Dream of Italy, which also suggests that the figure in that composition is a bacchante.

The bacchantes were the female followers of the Roman god Bacchus (Greek Dionysus), who could dance to an ecstatic frenzy, heads wreathed in the god’s sacred plant, ivy, and who were capable of doing great violence to their enemies.

An earlier painting, entitled Bacchante, ‘with a goat … Deep red and blue garments; background of woods,’ is recorded as having been on display in the New Gallery, 1888, so the subject seems to have been a favourite of Annie’s.

Head of a Bacchante:

• Media: oil on canvas.
• Dimensions: 410 x 460 mm (0.19 m²).
• History: may be the “little Bacchante head” exhibited at Earl’s Court, 1900 (Gentlewoman, 18 Aug 1900); signed, but signature (and date?) hidden behind frame; 1903 according to artuk.org; presented by Mrs. Richard Shute, 1937.
• Location: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

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Management note: ADOI update List of works page with bullet data.