Label reads: “Portrait of a Child / Subject and artist unknown. / Given to me by Miss Edith Prestige / 3 Montpelier Row, Blackheath London, SE3”.

• Title(s): Portrait of a child wearing a sash (this web site).
• Description: Portrait of a young girl (?), waist upwards, wearing a blue-green sash around her middle, sideways on but head turned to the viewer, inside a painted oval.
• Media: Oil on canvas on board (private communication).
• Dimensions: 19 x 15 inches (private communication).
• Signature/date/other text: None reported.
• History:
  • c. 1940 – Property of Miss Edith F. Prestige, Blackheath, London, and given to Mrs. A_. (Private communication.)
  • 1965 – Bequeathed to daughter of Mrs. A_. (Formerly transferred 1967.) (Private communication.)
• Location: Private collection.

Note: The attribution is due to statement in an executor letter of 1967 referring to “an unfinished head of a child by Annie Swinnerton [spelled with ‘I’ not ‘Y’]” during the conveyancing of Mrs A_’s property to her daughter, contradicting the note on back of painting which states “artist unknown”. There is no other evidence for attribution other than executor letter of 1967. Mrs. A_ co-habited with Miss Prestige c. 1940, who gave the painting to Mrs. A_. After Mrs A_’s death in 1965 the executor transferred this painting to Mrs. A_’s daughter in 1967 (private correspondence).

Attribution rather weak, but there is another tenuous connection: Annie’s lifelong friend Susan Isabel Dacre was resident at 30 South Vale Road, a-quarter-mile from 3 Montpelier Row, from at least 1929, dying there in 1933, so there is a chance she and possibly Annie were acquainted with Miss Prestige.

3 Montpelier Row / 30 South Vale Road.

Edith F. Prestige was born in Brockley, Kent, 1883, and died 8 Dec 1965. (Assumed to be all the same person because of the unusualness of the name and coincidental death date).

Further notes on the work HERE.

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Page last updated 2 Nov 2025.