Lot 119
Sir Alfred Munnings (1878-1959)
Provenance:
Ex. Coll. B. Knight Esq., inscribed on the label verso;
Ex. Coll. Bobby Young, Toronto purchased at Spink & Son Ltd., London c. 1967
Note:
The present work was painted for the artist’s own enjoyment and as a way to understand the character of his subjects. Munnings viewed “each horse as a friend” (page 179) so much so that he even began his memoirs with descriptions of various horses and credits them with being his inspiration. “Although they have given me much trouble and many sleepless nights, they have been my supporters, friends –my destiny, in fact. Looking back at my life, interwoven with them – painting them, feeding them, riding them, thinking about them – I hope I have learned something of their ways, appetite, outlook and ideas. I have never ceased to understand them. [They] have helped to place me where I am today” (An Artist’s Life page 14).
Munnings painted a number of his own horses situated in or near their stalls, many of them Munnings would not part with and they remain at his home at Dedham, now Castle House Museum. As he so revered his equine subjects even a casual portrait as this present one, acts as a tribute to them as well as his way to contemplate and understand them.
It is also clear that Munnings used these subjects as an exercise in tonality. The genius that Munnings illustrates time and again is that he made all the elements into a cohesive whole by using a limited color pallet and repeating the same hues. Rufus’s red chestnut highlights are echoed in the border of the blanket and various panels of wood on the barn structure. The greenish highlights and shadows of the blanket are repeated throughout the canvas thus making the horses a convincing part of the scene.
The present work depicts two of Munnings’ own horses whom he used as both models and hunters. Rufus (in the stall) was “fifteen and a half hands, a strong healthy brute, a chestnut with a white blaze and a head and crest like an Arab stallion – one of the best” as Munnings describes in the first of his three volume memoirs (An Artist’s Life, 1950 page 13). This horse featured in many paintings, the most prominent being Our Mutual Friend the Horse
(40 ½ x 50 ½, Private collection), a portrait of Lady Munnings on Rufus with Sir Alfred holding his pallet. A similar scene is illustrated in The Finish, 1952, after page 232)
Kismet, the bay horse with rug outside the stall was one of Violet Munnings’ horses, one of three hunters that came with her to the marriage in 1920. “This mare, a favorite, had carried my wife with the Waddon, the Cottesmore and in the Row. Lord Ribblesdale (most notable in his portrait by John Singer Sargent) used to ride her there. Kismet had won many a horse show” (The Second Burst, 1951, page 179).
Kismet was the subject of a number of paintings two of which are illustrated in The Second Burst, after page 200. Both of these works, The Whip and My Wife on Kismet were exhibited at the Royal Watercolour Society in 1929, numbers 163 and 94 respectively. These pictures were discussed in the Sunday Times 31 March, 1929 “ Skillful horse painter…but his aesthetic value of his equine subjects is due not merely to his knowledge of the points of the horse but still more perhaps to his brilliant effective rendering of sunlight”. Although this scene has subdued and muted light the same sentiment remains true.
This work will appear in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonne of the artist. Waddington’s is grateful to Lorian Peralta-Ramos for this contributing essay.