The Letter

The pioneering Victorian artist Annie Swynnerton was a successful portrait painter – she was a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and her sitters included the author Henry James and leading Suffragist Millicent Fawcett – but this painting is notably different to those works. Portraits of the era tended to show the subject looking directly at the viewer, but the girl in this painting is shown in profile, absorbed in reading a letter. Although we don’t know who the sitter was, there are some clues in the painting – her clothing, for instance, indicates that she belongs to a wealthy family.

As with many portraits of people holding letters, we don’t know what she’s reading. There’s an implication that it might be of great significance to them, but we’re left to imagine its message for ourselves.

It’s thought the painting’s unusually narrow shape might be a result of Swynnerton’s time in Rome, where she would have become familiar with the slender side panels of Italian Renaissance altarpieces, which often depicted individual saints. The dimensions create a claustrophobic atmosphere, in which the girl appears trapped by the confines of the canvas. Given Swynnerton’s strong support for the suffrage movement and the advancement of female artists, it’s tempting to interpret this formal decision as a metaphor for the limited options available to young women and the consequences of such inequality.

Swynnerton was an internationally acclaimed painter and passionate campaigner for women’s rights, who co-founded the Manchester Society of Women Painters and supported the Women’s Suffrage movement. Born in Manchester in 1844, she began her artistic training at the Manchester School of Art, where women were still banned from drawing nude models, before travelling to Paris and Rome, where she was able to study life drawing.

In 1922 (a mere 154 years after the institution was established), she became the first woman elected to the RA’s ranks – sort of. Since she was over 75 – the age limit for members allowed to take part in the running of the Academy – she was made a “retired Associate”.

Age 87 she recalled, "I had to struggle so hard... You see, when I was young, women could not paint – or so it was said. The world believed that and did not want the work of women, however sincere, however good."