Images: www.the-malvern-hills.uk / detail from gallery curatorial file.

• Title(s): The Unrelenting Past (current title at National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa); Thou Unrelenting Past (Truth, 26 Apr 1900); The Inexorable Past (Ladies’ Field, 19 May 1900); Thoughts (Royal Academy – George McCulloch collection, 1909). [In The Evening News, 24 October 1933, the title is given as “The Unrelenting Path”, which is assumed here to be a typo.]
• Description: “Half figure of an old woman, seated facing the spectator, leaning on a balustrade” (Royal Academy – George McCulloch collection, 1909).
• Media: oil on canvas (National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa).
• Dimensions: “28 by 22½ in” (71.1 x 57.2 cm) (Royal Academy – George McCulloch collection, 1909); “74.2 x 61.5 cm” (National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa).
• Signature/date/other text: “Signed and dated, “Annie L. Swynnerton, Roma, 1900″” (Royal Academy – George McCulloch collection, 1909).
• History:
  • 1900 May – Exhibited New Gallery, “The Inexorable Paet“, and bought by George McCulloch (Ladies’ Field, 19 May 1900); “Signed and dated, “Annie L. Swynnerton, Roma, 1900″” (Royal Academy – George McCulloch collection, 1909)
  • 1909 – Exhibited Royal Academy – George McCulloch’s collection of modern painting and sculpture, no. 294, “Thoughts“.
  • 1913 May – Auctioned Christie’s (‘Christie, Mason and Woods’), London, 23rd, 29th and 30th May, sold: “(Jackson) £68 5s” (about £6,700 at May 2025 equivalent).
  • 1913 – Purchased by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa; “Eric Brown, Director of the National Gallery of Canada, on a visit to London chose this picture for display at the gallery along with a number of others and it was then accepted into the permanent collection” (Brown, F. M. (1964) Breaking barriers – Eric Brown and the National Gallery. Canada: The Society for Art Publications).
  • 1919 Mar 1 – Exhibited Toronto, Canada. American Art News, 1 Mar 1919.
• Location: National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa.

No quality online image found. The image above is a combination of the McCullogh image (see below) and a National Gallery of Canada curatorial file image – the whole of the latter image is not reproduced here because of possible permission/copyright issues (and in any case details of the face are obscured by overprinted text).

Truth, 26 Apr 1900 (a weekly journal published in London): “[At the New Gallery] “Thou Unrelenting Past” (No. 37) Mrs A. L. Swynnerton gives another of those morbidly elaborate studies of old age which are now only too frequently seen in our picture shows.“

From American Art News, vol. 17, no. 21 (1 March 1919): “a portrait study of an old peasant woman by Annie Swynnerton, the technique delightful, the color warm and rich and the human appeal irresistible.”

If “Thou Unrelenting Past” is the correct title, it could be referring to the first line of the fourteen-verse poem, Past, by William Cullen Bryant, published in 1869 …

Thou unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.

The painting on display – middle right – at the McCulloch home, early 1900s. Image: Angus and Rosemary’s Miscellany of Malvern.

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Page last updated 4 Oct 2025.