Photos: Jonathan Russell.

• Title(s): The Dreamer (Manchester Art Gallery).
• Description: “Head and chest frontal portrait of a young peasant woman with a scarf over her head and a patterned shawl pulled about her shoulders. She holds a ball of wool in her right hand, a piece of knitting on three needles in her left hand, her head tilted slightly to the left, looking toward the viewer. Landscape background of white cottages amongst bare woodland trees” (Manchester Art Gallery).
• Media: oil on canvas (Manchester Art Gallery).
• Dimensions: “framed: 6.1 cm (depth); 74.5 cm (height); 64.3 cm (width) / unframed: 53.3 cm (height); 42.8 cm (width)” (Manchester Art Gallery).
• Signature/date/other text: “Annie L Robinson / 1887”.
• History:
  • 1887 – Signed and dated.
  • 1887 – Exhibited Grosvenor Gallery, no. 93 (Grosvenor Notes, 1887, p27).
  • 1898 – Exhibited Exhibition of International Art, Knightsbridge, “Mrs. A Swynnerton / Clareville Road Studios, Gloucester Road / 189 The Dreamer” (A catalogue of the pictures, drawings, prints and sculpture in the … exhibition of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters & Gravers, 1898 [Hathi Trust]).
  • 1923 – Manchester Art Gallery – Painting by Mrs Swynnerton, A.R.A., no. 4, “Painted in the Isle of Man”.
  • 1936 – “gift [to Manchester Art Gallery] from Miss F. R. Wilkinson, 1936” (Manchester Art Gallery).
  • 1983-1984 – Manchester Art Gallery – Knitting (Manchester Art Gallery).
  • 2018-2019 – Exhibited Manchester Art Gallery, 23 Feb 2018 to 6 Jan 2019.
• Location: Manchester Art Gallery.

“… painted in the Isle of Man …” (The Queen, 15 Mar 1890; 1923 exhibition catalogue).

“… part of a series of paintings of contemporary working-class Manx women that Swynnerton produced around 1887. For these works she made direct studies of real landscapes.” (Notice by painting while on exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery, 23 Feb 2018 to 6 Jan 2019.)

… may allude to Queen Eurydice from the Greek play Antigone and represent women’s ability to realise the dream of determining their own fates. Eurydice’s suicide, by her own knitting needles, alludes to the Fates, three Greek goddesses who controlled the thread of every mortal life. This seems appropriate given that Swynnerton painted this on the Isle of Man where in 1881 women gained the right to vote in a general election. (Notice by painting while on display Manchester 2018-2019.)

* Fanny Rollo Wilkinson (1855-1951) was a Manchester-born professional gardener and close friend of suffragist Millicent Garrett Fawcett. In 1884 she became Britain’s first female professional gardener after completing an eighteen month course at the Crystal Palace School of Landscape Gardening and Practical Horticulture, until then an entirely male establishment. She later became principle of Swanley Horticultural College and during the First World War helped organise the Women’s National Land Service Corps.

The model used may have been the same woman as in The Convalescent and Manx Maid. All three works are dated 1887. (Thanks to Alastair Swinnerton for the observation.)

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Page last updated 17 Oct 2025.