ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON, PORTRAIT OF.

See also: Elizabeth at Wemmergill and Elizabeth at Wemmergill, sketch for.

Photos: Jonathan Russell.

  • Title(s): Portrait of Elizabeth Williamson (this web site); Portrait of Miss Elizabeth Williamson (Tate); Portrait of a young blonde Girl (W.H. Lane & Son, 2001); Half length portrait of young girl (Lindsay Burns & Company, 2007).
  • Description: Bust portrait of a blue-eyed, blonde-haired, young girl, body turned to the viewers left, face three-quarters towards the view, eyes looking directly at the viewer, dark and high-necked clothing, undetailed brush-worked background.
  • Media: Oil on canvas (Tate).
  • Dimensions: Average 33.5 x 30 cm; 13¼ x 11¾ inches / 33 x 29 cm (Mallam’s, 2008); “33.5cm x 30cm” (Lindsay Burns & Company, 2007); “33.5 x 30 cm” (W.H. Lane & Son, 2001).
  • Signature/date/other text: “Annie L Swynnerton / 1906” bottom left.
  • History:
    • 1906 – Signed and dated.
    • 2001 Oct 25 – Auctioned W.H. Lane & Son, Penzance, Cornwall, UK, lot 383, passed.
    • 2007 Dec 11 – Auctioned Lindsay Burns & Company, Perth, UK, lot 458.
    • 2008 Aug 21 – Auctioned Mallams, lot 235, “bas gauche”, sold: hammer £400.
    • Date? – With vendor Joanna Cole Fine Art (archive.org).
    • 2012?-2013 – Owned by art historian and author, Susan Thompson, author of The Life and Works of Annie Louisa Swynnerton.
    • 2013 – “Presented by Chris Thomson, in memory of Susan Thomson 2013” (Tate).
    • 2022 Nov – Exhibited Tate Britain, “Spotlights: Annie Swynnerton” exhibition.
  • Location: Tate.

Essay on the work from the Tate web site:

Portrait of Miss Elizabeth Williamson 1906 is a small signed portrait in oil on canvas, showing the head and shoulders of a young girl by Annie Louise Swynnerton. She wears a high-necked thick blue sweater painted with thick brushstrokes. Her blonde should-length hair is loose and her cheeks flushed. She turns to the viewer with an open, carefree smile. The blue of the jumper is picked out in the sitter’s pale blue eyes and the yellow of hair in her eyebrows and facial highlights. Despite this naturalism of this painting, the use of reds, yellows and the blues create a bright, decorative effect. The work is a lively study for the life-size equestrian portrait Miss Elizabeth Williamson on a Pony 1907 …, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1934, and was presented to Tate by Mrs F. Howard in 1939, six years after Swynnerton’s death. Prior to entering Tate’s collection, this study was owned by the art historian Susan Thomson, an expert on Swynnerton.

This painting exhibits Swynnerton’s luminous, bravura style characteristic of the avant-garde aestheticism and impressionism with which she was associated. It was most probably made from life. Such sketches were part of Swynnerton’s method for capturing portraits that were highly individualised in their features and lively in their expression. The sitter was the grand-daughter of Mrs Charles Hunter. Mrs Hunter owned the Villa Barbaro in Venice and was a collector and close friend of writers Henry James and Edith Wharton and artists such as Swynnerton and John Singer Sargent. Elizabeth’s mother, Phyliss, was one of the three women in The Misses Hunter painted by Sargent in 1902 …

Annie Louisa Swynnerton (neé Robinson) became the first woman to be elected an associate of the Royal Academy for nearly 150 years (since Angelica Kaufmann in 1768). Swynnerton was an active feminist and suffragette …  In 1876 she and fellow artist Susan Dacre founded the Manchester Society of Women Painters. She contributed to the British aesthetic and impressionist movements, exhibiting at the avant-garde Grosvenor Gallery in London as well as the Royal Academy. She associated with artists including George Frederic Watts, Edward Burne-Jones and Sargent, who donated Swynnerton’s Oreads exhibited 1907 to Tate in 1922 … She also had success on the continent and lived in Rome between 1883 and 1910 with her husband, the sculptor Joseph Swynnerton …

Source: www.tate.org.uk.

When on display at the Tate Britain, November 2022, it could be seen that the picture has been reframed since aquisition in 2013.

Page last updated 5 Jun 2025.