Images: Jonathan Russell / www.criterionauctioneers.com.

• Title(s): Study of hands (label on back).
• Description: oil sketch studies of a left and right hand, with narrow white cuffs, with a less prominent third central hand complete down to wrist only.
• Media: oil on canvas, “gilt wood frame” (Criterion Auctioneers, 26 Aug).
• Dimensions: ?canvas 15 x 12 in (= 38.1 x 30.5 cm, Christie’s, 3 Jun 1986); ?frame 41 x 34 cm (Criterion Auctioneers, 26 Aug).
• Signature/date/other text: none on front; on back exhibition and framer’s labels, stamps: FR935 and 357VP
• History:
  • 1908-1909? – Date unknown, but possibly c. 1908-1909 by similarity to Count Zouboff.
  • early 1930s? – One of three works by Annie known to have been in the undated “A Painter’s Choice” exhibition, the others being Blue Seascape and Gipsy Girl (known from 1934 illustration).
  • 1986 Mar 6 – Auctioned Christie’s, lot 109, “15.00 in. (38.10 cm.) (height) by 12.00 in. (30.48 cm.) (width)”, sold: hammer £600.
  • 1999 May 19 – Auctioned Christie’s, South Kensington, ‘The El Helou Collection,’ “provenance Edward Le Bas RA, Sir Gerald Kelly ARA”.
  • 2019 Aug 26 – Auctioned Criterion, Islington, London, lot 65, sold: hammer £460.
• Location: private collection.

The guest bedroom on the first landing [of Anissa El Helou’s house] is dominated by an Annie Louisa Swynnerton painting of a winged soldier [Armoured angel with a boy] (in the workroom upstairs is the more evocative Study of Hands by the same artist). (The Independent, 16 May 1999.)

No recorded provenance (other than recent owners), but it has all the characteristics of Annie’s later paintings – variation of colour across the canvas with no broad monochrome areas, skilled modelling of the hands, ‘unfinished’ appearance, lack of detail in peripheral areas. The framing and labeling are all appropriate to the attribution.

The treatment of the hands is similar to that in Count Zouboff, dated 1908-9. There are three hands, the centre one being mostly overpainted by the lower hand.

A label on the back refers to the picture having been included in an exhibition, ‘A Painter’s Choice’, arranged by the ‘Art Exhibitions Bureau’, Suffolk Street, Pall Mall (a street just to the north-west of Trafalgar Square, London). Another label identifies the frame as having been fitted or restored by James Bourlet and Sons, a London fine art framing specialist founded in 1850.

A photograph from 1922 shows Annie wearing rings on the outer fingers of her left hand, so this could possibly be a ‘hands self-portrait’.

In Annie’s posthumous studio sale there were at least two ‘studies of hands’ in the ‘unfinished and unstretched’ part of the auction, lot 145, ‘A study of hands‘, sold with three other paintings, and lot 150, ‘Studies of hands, etc.’, three paintings sold together under this title. A ‘Study of hands‘ was auctioned at Christie’s, 6 Mar 1986, the dimensions given are almost identical to this work, so presumed here to be the same painting.

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Thanks to Criterion Auctions for assistance viewing the painting.

Page last updated 25 Oct 2025.