Terms and conditions of use
The lady in white
1878
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
194.0 × 115.2 cm (image) 194.8 × 116.0 cm (canvas)
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program, 2020
Gallery location
Not on display
About this work
Annie L. Swynnerton commenced her art training at the Manchester School of Art in 1868, before travelling to Italy and France for further studies. Painted in Paris in 1878, The lady in white reflects the influence of Swynnerton’s enrolment at the Académie Julian, a progressive art school in Paris’s Passage des Panoramas. An ambitious life-size portrait, imbued with a French juste milieu (happy medium) blend of academic realism and Impressionist painterly freedom, The lady in white could have easily graced the walls of the Paris Salon. The exquisite rendering of the fabric in the sitter’s dress reflects the artist’s love of seventeenth-century Dutch painting.
Frame: reproduction, 2022, based on a Watts frame by W. A.
Smith, London, dated c. 1887
Artwork Details
Place/s of Execution
Paris, France
Inscription
inscribed in brown paint l.r.: Annie L. Robinson / 1878
Accession Number
2020.88
Department
International Painting
Provenance
Property of a deceased estate, 2017; Corringe’s, Lewes, 21 March 2017, lot 758, Full length portrait of a lady wearing a white dress and holding a bouquet of roses; Christie's London, 11 December 2018, Lot 196, The lady in white, where acquired by Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family, Melbourne.