PORTRAIT OF BESSIE, WIFE OF COLONEL MASSY.

Image: Royal Academy Illustrated, 1927.

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Note: spelling in Royal Academy publications, 1927, is ‘Massy’ not ‘Massey’.
Title(s): Bessie, wife of Colonel Massy (Royal Academy 1927 exhibition catalogue).
Description: a woman sitting at a piano, her hands over the keys, a stand with two candles attached to the left side of the piano, background and other details roughly sketched rather than finely finished.
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History:
- 1927 – Royal Academy – Summer Exhibition, no. 502 (catalogue); Royal Academy Illustrated, 1927.
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In Gallery IX., ‘Bessie, wife of Colonel Massy’ (502), by Annie L. Swynnerton, is supposed to be singing ‘Oh for the touch of a vanished hand,’ to her own accompaniment. The artist needs to be reminded that while curved lines are all very well in the case of a lady’s robe, perfectly straight ones are indispensable when depicting the keys of a pianoforte.

The Musical Times, 1 Jun 1927.

The song referred to is an arrangement of the 1842 Tennyson poem, Break, break, break:

Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me

There is a sung version by Bettina and Matthias Wenthe of Cowhouse Project here: https://youtu.be/xSc8yp_Mb6M.

Note: different sources spell the surname ‘Massy or Massey,’ but the former is taken as the correct version on this web site..

* Information from Alastair Swinnerton, Royal Academy Illustrated image from Grant Waters. Thanks to both.

Page last updated 24 Oct 2025. [Management: check ‘The Illustrated London News, 7 May 1927, p832′.]

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