Self Portrait

Annie Swynnerton was born into a family of six sisters in Hulme, Manchester in 1844. She began her studies at Manchester School of Art in 1871, where she would go on to earn a scholarship and gold prize in watercolour and oil painting. She also studied at the Académie Julian in Paris. 

Her works focused on portraits, figures, symbolist works and landscapes, and was supported by Burne-Jones and Watts. By balancing the styles of the Neoclassicists, Impressionists and Pre-Raphaelites, Swynnerton mastered her skills in drawing and colour displays, while maintaining allegorical subjects. 

In 1874 she studied in Rome alongside a fellow artist and friend, Susan Isabel Dacre. She and her future husband, Joseph William Swynnerton, married in 1883 and lived primarily in Rome together. From Rome is where an exhibition at the Tate described her as ‘the most daring female painters of the nude.’ 

Swynnerton exhibited in the Royal Academy of Arts from 1879 to 1886 and then 1902 to 1934. John Singer Sargent admired and purchased her work and was instrumental in her election to the Academy in 1922. She was the first female associate of the Royal Academy since the 18th century and the first woman to be elected to the organisation (Kauffman and Moser were cofounders). 

During her lifetime, her works exhibited both nationally and internationally, including Aberdeen, Doncaster, Huddersfield, Manchester and Chicago and Pittsburgh. She was also close friends with the Pankhurst family and an active supporter of the women’s suffrage movement.