Portrait of Margery Angelo Swynnerton, 1917, by Frederick Swynnerton.

A fine quality portrait of an attractive young woman, the artist's daughter, painted in 1917 when she was 23; in its original frame. Signed and dated lower right.

FREDERICK SWYNNERTON (1858-1918) was a painter of some distinction. Born in Douglas on the Isle of Man, he was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and lectured on Manx prehistoric remains.

He was taught painting first in Rome, where he lived in the ménage kept by his older brother, the sculptor Joseph William Swynnerton and his wife, Annie, the painter and suffragette, who was elected to the Royal Academy. He bought the wall-paintings of the Domus Aurea whilst in Rome; they are now in the British Museum.

He went on to the Académie Julian in Paris and then set out for India, to make a career for himself as a portrait painter. He married the daughter of an Anglo-Italian fencing and soldiering family, Louise Oldfield Angelo, and lived with them in Simla. Louise died in 1941.

Swynnerton painted portraits of many of the important Europeans in India. He died suddenly in Bombay in 1918, the year after he painted this portrait, and is buried at the Sewri Christian Cemetery.

MARGERY AUGUSTUS ANGELO SWYNNERTON, was born in Delhi, Bengal on the 15th August 1894. She died in the UK in 2000. She was also an artist.

When this portrait was painted in 1917, her father had visited her in Bombay where she was recovering from pneumonia, caught in Mesopotamia, present day Iraq, whilst nursing wounded troops along with a small group of similarly strong-minded British nurses. They became the first British women to care for Indian soldiers, not on the Western Front but in the searing desert heat of Mesopotamia. Conditions were hellish, temperatures up to 115 degrees Fahrenheit, and conditions primitive in the extreme; more than half the nurses became ill, often with dysentery.

Seeing the far-away look in Margery's eyes, as she sat in safety, her father painting her, as she convalesced, one cannot help but wonder what she was thinking. The horrors she had seen were not long ago, and the war continued......

SIZE:38 x 31.5 x 2.25 inches including the frame.

PROVENANCE: by direct descent in the family.

Verso: Old storage label for Allen's Depository, Colwyn Bay, and the handwritten name 'Angelo'.